It’s an emotionally charged word. What it describes, in terms of human needs, can straddle two or three tiers of Maslow’s hierarchy. More often than not it influences, directly and indirectly, all of the others. Dictionaries emphasise its physical aspects, psychologists it’s intangible associations.
Its where we rest our weary selves and hang both our metaphorical and actual hats. As important as the external structure, the shelter, is, for many people, across cultures, it is far more than four walls and a roof. It encompasses a wider area, a location where there is a familiarity, not just of people, of family, friends and community, but also of resources and activities. As individuals, human beings, it is integral to both self identification and actualisation.
And, like us, according to animal behaviouralists, other creatures who share the earth with us, extend it over larger areas, ranges and territories too. It is where they know how to survive, commune with others (if they are social) and have a function, even an identity, in the landscape.
How we have developed our conception of it, with a focus on urbanity, where disproportionate numbers of us either choose or ‘need’ to live, whether for employment, education, proximity to family or social groups and activities related to them, or some other intangible association to it, has stolen, continues to steal the homelands of other species. Now many, if they have survived, find themselves in unfamiliar environments, forcibly evicted from rightful occupancy of lands which were once home to them.
And we've done it to ourselves too. As the Anthropocene, with all of its climate and environment wrecking tendencies, accelerates, vast and increasing swathes of humanity have spent, will spend significant proportions of their lives migrating, leaving and searching for it. Searching for the physical, for tangible and intangible, actual and imagined, place to call it, displaced permanently from where it once was.
As the forces of capital, (mis) managed still, in corporations and governments alike, by extractive, neoliberal agendas, continue their colonisation of the most basic human needs, in the UK, as it is in many other ‘developed’ societies, we humans, as citizen consumers, have succumbed, in our search for it, to the marketing predations of bulk house builders.
Many are caught in an endless cycle of seeking, of finding a house to make a home. Of affordable housing quotas, distant property ladder rungs, buy to let schemes, landlords and rentierism dictating every aspect of how human lives are lived.
Whilst increasing percentages of humanity spend increasing amounts of their lives searching for it, periods where there is no physical place of their own to call home lengthen. Temporary periods, interregnums, extend into seemingly, inexhaustibly, inescapably permanent states.
In them, humans live the basic hierarchical, need-based, fundamental and disorienting stresses of not knowing if there will be a safe place to sleep. The winds of displacement, of homelessness, run deeper than failure to meet physical needs.
The despondency experienced, by humanity adrift, without the anchor of home, is all too real. The trauma of being evicted, for whatever reason, from a place which defines you, is magnitudes greater than ‘simply’ losing a house. Indigenous peoples know this trauma all too well.
We have created, are creating, a society disrupted from connections and identities fundamental to being, to home. As a result, we fracture and destroy them for others, including other species.
Slowly, possibly too late, we have started to acknowledge the rights of others, of humans and other species, to exist, to have identity and to fulfil their need for home. Connected to a place, a community, through a physical home, we experience a fundamental sense of belonging, of being accepted and supported.
We experience safety, security and comfort, even in the face of adversity. Home is the difference between surviving and thriving.
It is perhaps understandable, with the concept of a home being more tenuous and variable than that of a house, for the United Nations to have enshrined in international human rights law the right to housing. The right to ‘adequate housing’ was recognised as part of the right to an ‘adequate standard of living’ in article 25 of the 1948 ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ and in article 11.1 of the 1966 ‘International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’.
Elsewhere, other international treaties have since recognised or referred to the thus defined ‘human right to adequate housing’, or at least some elements which also refer to the concept of home, often regarding protection over home and the right to privacy within it.
Furthermore, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has underlined that the ‘right to adequate housing’ should not be interpreted too narrowly. They emphasise it should be seen as the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity.
The characteristics of how they guide state actors to interpret this right are clarified mainly in the Committee's general comments ‘No.4 (1991) on the right to adequate housing’ and ‘No.7 (1997) on forced evictions’. These clarify what the UN considers ‘adequate housing’.
According to the UN, the right to it contains ‘freedoms’. These include:
- protection against forced evictions and the arbitrary destruction and demolition of ones home;
- the right to be free from arbitrary interference with ones home, privacy and family; and
- the right to choose one's residence, to determine where to live and to freedom of movement.
The UN consider the right to also contain ‘entitlements’. These include:
- security of tenure;
- housing, land and property restitution;
- equal and non-discriminatory access to adequate housing; and
- participation in housing-related decision-making at national and community levels.
The designated Special Rapporteur considers housing as ‘the basis of stability and security for an individual or family’, considering also that while it is ‘increasingly viewed as a commodity. housing is most importantly a human right’. They go on to note:
‘Too often violations of the right to housing occur with impunity. In part this is the cause, at the domestic level, housing is rarely treated as a human right. The key to ensuring adequate housing is the implementation of this human right through appropriate government policy and programmes, including National Housing strategies
Climate change, natural disasters and armed conflict pose a threat to the enjoyment of the right to adequate housing and displace every year millions. Infrastructure development, hydropower dams, and mega events, such as Olympic Games or football World Cups, should contribute to the realisation of the right to adequate housing and not undermine it.
Housing and real estate markets worldwide have been transformed by global capital markets and financial excess. Known as the financialisation of housing, the phenomenon occurs when housing is treated as a commodity - a vehicle for wealth and investment rather than a social good…
… While revenues from real estate have accumulated, our cities have become increasingly unaffordable. In many countries, women, religious and ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, migrants and refugees face discrimination in relation to housing, or live in the most appalling conditions. Spatial segregation excludes many residents from equal access to public services, Education, transportation and other opportunities. Local governments are often at the forefront of the struggle for housing and can play a key role in protecting and realising the right to adequate housing.’
They also acknowledge that:
‘Some 1.8 billion people live in informal settlements or inadequate housing, with limited access to essential services, such as water and sanitation or electricity, and are often under threat of forced eviction. And one of the most severe violations of the right to adequate housing – homelessness - has been on a steep increase in many economically advanced countries.’
‘Adequate housing’, according to the UN, must provide ‘more than four walls and a roof’. They emphasise that a number of conditions must be met before any form of shelter can be thought of as constituting what they consider it to be.
These are just as fundamental to this basic human right as supply and/or availability. For housing to be ‘adequate’, it must, at a minimum, meet the following criteria:
- security of tenure - housing is not adequate if its occupants do not have a degree of tenure security, which guarantees legal protection against forced evictions, harassment and other threats.
- availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure- housing is not adequate if its occupants do not have safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, energy for cooking, heating, lighting, food storage or refuse disposal.
- affordability - housing is not adequate if its cost threatens or compromises the occupants’ enjoyment of other human rights.
- habitability - housing is not adequate if it does not guarantee physical safety or provide adequate space, as well as protection against cold, damp, heat, rain, wind or other threats to health and structural hazards.
- accessibility - housing is not adequate if the specific needs of disadvantaged and marginalised groups are not taken into account.
- location - housing is not adequate if it is cut off from employment opportunities, healthcare services, schools, childcare centres and other social facilities, or is located in polluted or dangerous areas.
- cultural adequacy - housing is not adequate if it does not respect and take into account the expression of cultural identity.
The numbers of people, worldwide, who live in ‘informal settlements or inadequate housing with limited access to essential services’ are so large as to be almost incomprehensible. Even zooming the lens in, seeking more understandable, manageable numbers, must, of necessity, acknowledge the scale of the issue and the varied, often elusive or nefarious strands which contribute most to it, for differing levels of what is considered ‘local government’.
Devolved settlements and where political responsibility for housing now lies, means official homelessness figures are recorded separately and differently across the UK, from country to country, region to region, city to city and council to council. What is considered ‘homeless’ is often not the same as what is considered ‘inadequately housed’, especially if all of the freedoms, entitlements and fundamental criteria which the UN consider constitute essential elements of ‘adequate housing’ and the human right to it are taken into consideration. Much of the disparity can be accounted for through ‘financialisation of housing’, where, in every polity of the UK, housing is treated as ‘a commodity, a vehicle for wealth and investment, rather than a social good’.
Zooming in further then, acknowledging difficulty ascertaining difference between numbers of people who are ‘inadequately housed’ and those considered ‘homeless’, it is worth (at least in terms of assessing genuine scale of the issue), noting what the official figures for homelessness in Scotland are. This should only be done whilst also acknowledging these as more than likely to be a significant underestimate of how many humans here are being denied, for whatever reason, their basic human right to ‘adequate housing’.
As with so many other things, despite the importance of language to how we, as humans, process perceptions, nomenclature and repeated usage of it, despite more appropriate alternatives, is unfortunate regarding how we refer to these issues. Many people referred to as ‘homeless’ prefer the term ‘unhoused’, on the basis of perceptions that no matter how temporary a situation may be, wherever or whatever they may have managed to utilise for shelter, for that period of time they, often of necessity, must consider it home.
Just to confuse matters further, the Scottish Government, in line with other UK wide governmental and municipal authorities, collect, report and provide data on homelessness at ‘household’ level. This is whilst also acknowledging that it is derived from individual local authority or council-based data, which records the number of people associated with applications.
So, when referring to ‘homelessness statistics’, we use the (oxymoronic?) term ‘homeless households’, whilst attempting to understand how many people are affected by homelessness. The latest available figures for Scotland found there were 32,242 homeless households in 2022-23, which contained a total of 53,111 people. These comprised of 36,848 adults and 16,263 children.
Compared to the previous year, the number of adults increased by 11% and the number of children by 10%. This was in line with an overall increase of 10% in homeless households.
Of the 32,242 homeless households, 31,732 (98%) were assessed as ‘unintentionally homeless’. The remaining 510 (2%) were assessed as intentionally homeless. Overall, 126 per 10,000 households were assessed as homeless.
Local councils are legally, socially and politically responsible for addressing issues of homelessness and lack of housing in their area. This includes over what is classed as ‘adequate housing’ and use of what is classed as ‘temporary accommodation’ In their area.
The concept should and will be revisited, in a more general sense, but it is worth, for now, looking at overall and council-based figures for people who have made an official homelessness application and, accordingly, spend time in ‘temporary accommodation’.
For example, all homeless households in Shetland had at least one temporary accommodation placement. This contrasts with 72% of homeless households in Angus, who had no such placement at all. In Edinburgh, 18% of homeless households had five placements or more, much higher than any other local authority.
‘Social sector’ accommodation is the most common type of temporary accommodation used, across the board, in particular for households with children. High proportions of hotel and B&B accommodation do not register fully in gathered data.
This can be explained by the fact that duration for stays in them is much shorter than for other temporary accommodation. On that basis, they account for a much smaller percentage of overall use, despite remaining statistically significant.
Data regarding total duration of time spent in temporary accommodation is calculated by ‘summing’ the time a household spends in individual placements, excluding time between them, when a household is not placed in officially recognised temporary accommodation. On these bases (and so many others, some discussed herein previously, some not) all figures for homelessness, nationally and locally, must be considered as vastly underestimated.
Attempting to deal with the genuine scale of the issue has led to some local authorities, based on lack of adequate housing stock, to declare housing crises or emergencies. Others will follow suit, as will such a declaration by the Scottish Government, as is currently being considered. How we respond to such declarations will be telling.
Crisis response, to whatever phenomenon, should require appropriate, immediate and just intervention. Declaring a crisis requires a response, not just a throw your hands in the air or clasp them tight, wringing them in performative earnest, reactions. As yet, none of the municipal authorities decalring housing crises have done any more than declare and react. Will genuine responses, interventions, good, just or fair governance follow? Ah hae ma doots.
Looking at figures leading to such declarations, how we respond and have responded previously, if we have or do at all, may just start from an ill-founded premise. Capitulating to market forces and allowing or encouraging bulk house building, on the basis of affordable housing quotas to be included as offset to the inevitability of perpetuating the very housing markets which caused so many of the issues in the first place - housing ‘treated as commodity- a vehicle for wealth and investment rather than a social good’ - is not a good premise or foundation to build a new housing and homelessness strategy on. If ye want tae get there, ah widnae start fae here.
Given the compound scale of financialisation of housing in Edinburgh (in common with many other tourist ‘destination’ cities), it is worth looking at how third sector and social housing provision contributes to perpetuating this market-based, cyclical hegemony there. It may be worth a wee sketch at social housing providers as third sector actors in the context of what this blog has written on the subject previously, here, before diving into some of the specifics, giving them more of their due context too.
In Edinburgh, relatively recently, a particularly poignant and frustrating example framed itself as a solution, to homelessness without appearing to realise it failed to fully utilise some of its practical aspects, which may also have addressed some of the underlying issues more fully, being a lack of housing stock. A lack of 'adequate housing' stock, a lack of houses is a lack of homes.
On the face of things, the partnership between ‘nest’ house builder Jonathan Avery and Social Bite, to help build a ‘tiny house community’, placed near Granton since 2016-17, was a practical and necessary intervention in the city's homelessness and housing crises. Homeless applicants placed there are/were also provided with a ‘controlled environment, where residents receive everything they need, including counselling, money management guidance, cooking lessons, exercise and therapy’.
The architects and providers promote the fact that ‘residents...also learn new skills and get their life back on track, working in an on-site vegetable garden, chicken coup and furniture workshop, as well as being given work placements in…(their)…shops and restaurant’.
Their plan stated, at the outset, and remains that:
‘After 12-15 months…(they)…will help transition the residents into permanent accommodation and provide employment in Social Bite’s broader business and their partners, supporting their journey back into society where they belong. After the residents have moved on to permanent accommodation,…(they)…will welcome another 20 residents into the village and…will aim to support 20 new residents out of homelessness every single year…
… The residents will be people who are currently living in mostly unsupported temporary accommodation, shelters and homelessness B&Bs…(They) plan to provide a significant cost saving to Edinburgh Council taxpayers, whilst at the same time providing a route out of homelessness for the individuals…(they)…take into the village…
…In doing this…(they)…aim to create a blueprint of an alternative solution to homelessness and the housing crisis that can be replicated by other charities, local authorities or the state.’
Unpacking this seemingly well-intentioned rhetoric, intentions and actions outlined by the project, is a complex task. Placing it in the context of planetary crises helps. Beginning with its use of tiny houses is a good place to start.
Before looking at tiny houses as homes, temporary or otherwise, it is necessary to place them in the context of the ‘right’ crisis. Localised crises of homelessness or adequate housing shortages are symptoms of wider planetary crises and should be considered in that light. So should what we think of and call a home.
In a previous post, here, this blog attempted to cover how wider planetary crises impact locally in Angus, responses to which are microcosms of how Scotland is responding. As local authorities and residents alike strove, are striving, to return to perceived normalcy, an opportunity to genuinely ruggedise themselves for an increasingly uncertain future was missed.
Extreme weather events are a symptom of ecological crisis, right here, right now. Responding to planetary crisis brought home, made all too real, global become local, by playing make believe about any kind of orderly transition to a future which is already here is not helping to accelerate us, societally, toward adequate solutions. Or moving us toward any kind of genuine risk management or mitigation. We have deferred agency to demurring authorities.
Planetary crises have, in this way, been allowed to grow so large we have lost, have passed by the limited window of opportunity we may have had to deploy any ability possible, not securing orderly transition to a more sustainable society. And still we pretend.
We cling to legacy ideas about climate solutions and policies, organising and awareness raising, manifestly outdated and no longer workable. They are largely so because the political dynamics they depend upon have failed to materialise.
As David Roberts has observed, ‘Probably the scariest thing about climate change is that its effects are going to make addressing its causes progressively more difficult’. Failing to address the causes will compound the effects.
And as planetary crises worsen, thousands of communities, just like those in Angus, around the world, face economic loss, social upheaval, displacement and ultimately enforced migration. Normal service cannot be resumed and much like it was for the people of Brechin, a lot of people are in for a real shock, real soon.
Humanity failed to heed warnings signalled over decades. We failed to prevent what was once an impending crisis. Now it is here, knocking loudly at your door.
Much of the world knows it too. Or remains wilfully ignorant to it.
But fingers in ears or hands over eyes, a double bind of ignoring not just the crises but also failing political prestidigitation reacting to them, cannot deny reality. We are experiencing, will continue to experience, a bombardment of climate and ecological damage unlike anything humans have ever seen.
These increasingly ever-present impacts are not only dangerous in and of themselves, they also trigger economic loss, social upheaval and family impoverishment. And it seems it will only get worse before it gets better.
If it gets, if we can make it, better.
Sure, some damaged infrastructure will be repaired. People will return to work. Homes will be mended or rebuilt. Real loss will be suffered but places will still exist. Life, as we have known it, will appear to go on. Until it doesn't.
How many climate events, disasters, deluges, floods, hurricanes, storms, heat waves, wildfires can be thrown at a place before its future collapses?
How long before the risks are so high no one there can afford insurance, if it is available at all?
How long before everyone who can move, does? Since those with most means or opportunity are first to relocate away from climate danger, what kind of impact will the flight of youth, wealth and expertise have on communities or the prospects of place, of home?
How long before everyone left is economically trapped? We have ignored longstanding, prevailing evidence that the vast majority of our citizens are headed for a situation where they have nothing like enough resources to protect themselves or their communities. No one is coming to help them relocate and they lack the resources to do it on their own.
How long before the cost or availability of adequate housing, in relative safe spaces, is beyond the means of almost all of us? The evidence indicates not long at all and that it is most likely already the case.
Political upheavals caused, where so many people have been confronted by their own unreadiness, are already straining governments, municipal authorities and legacy institutions worldwide. At this point, not much can actually be done for the most endangered places. We didn't act soon enough.
The parlous state of current politics doesn't inspire confidence we can or will take real, collective action, even where bold responses could still make a huge difference. How ready (and how exposed) are you?
Nowhere, no-one, is ‘safe’. That doesn't mean nowhere, or no-one, is any safer than anyone or anywhere else. Choosing wisely where and how to weather the coming storms is critical to surviving them.
Scale and seeming inevitability lead to an all-encroaching sense of futility. None of us can respond to these crises alone. But can, will, anyone help, if we don't act ourselves, while there is still any time at all?
In the face of climate and ecological discontinuities on this all-pervasive scale, much conventional, political and practical, wisdom or expertise no longer applies. It is no longer very useful. In fact, it is more often than not, counter-productive, part of the problem not the solution.
That doesn't mean we can't learn to spot new patterns, develop smart strategies and improve our odds. But time is on no-one’s side.
How prepared are you to make the informed, necessary and quick choices so many of us are about to be forced to make? Ask yourself and answer honestly.
No one can do it for you, no one is going to rescue you. And your future, the futures of your loved ones, your family, your community, what you call home, depend upon it.
While you think about it, consider also how you've come to perceive what home is restricts your ability to remain informed enough to make the necessary choices in the time left. If the house you call home is mortgaged to a bank, despite thinking of yourself as a homeowner, it is not your asset or commodity, it is theirs.
When you bought the house, did you consider all risk, including from potential climate events? if you're tied into a 25-to-30-year mortgage, did you factor in how much climate could change during that time?
How rugged are the materials, from which your house is constructed, in the face of impacts from that changing climate? Did its builders consider any of that, or was the distance between cost of materials and sale price a higher priority for them?
Did you have any other choice? Do you have any now? What agency did and do you have? How do you ruggedise, prepare for whats coming, better than you prepared for what is here now?
In the face of impending multiple planetary crises, what is adequate housing? What is a permanent home?
Many people, the world over, have considered all of those questions and arrived at tiny houses as a solution. As a personal and societal shift to where they belong now, not temporary accommodation as a stepping stone on ‘a journey back into society’. As an agile, adaptable, affordable, sustainable home.
For quite some time, the tiny house movement has been both a contemporary example of alternative housing practices and a signal to changing perceptions of what home is and should be. Adherents arrive at tiny houses, as solutions, through diverse, prefigurative practices or politics. For most, these, in turn, have invoked an expanded sense of fairness and agency in and through housing.
Tiny houses offer an acknowledged imperfect yet compelling alternative narrative of home for their inhabitants. Collectively, the tiny house movement advances a more just and equitable approach to housing, by providing inspiration for those seeking to question previously apparently unassailable ideas about how we should live.
The tiny house movement, sometimes cited as ultimately inspired by Thoreau’s ‘Walden’, is considered, in its modern iterations, to have started in the 1970s. Early pioneers and advocates include Alan Wexler, Lloyd Khan, Lester R. Walker, Jay Shafer and Sarah Susanka.
The movement has expanded more rapidly since 2008, accelerated by the global financial crisis, escalating housing costs and growing interests in simplified and/or sustainable living. Defined as smaller than 40 square metres, tiny houses usually have no foundations and many are built on a trailer chassis.
Combining innovative design and affordability, often self built from reclaimed, repurposed or locally available materials, post-globalisation, in many ways tiny houses can rightfully claim to be contemporary vernacular architecture. Challenging both bulk house-building and the ‘bigger-is-better’ symbolic aspect of capital-led consumption in housing, prevalent in countries like the UK and US, they require less upfront and ongoing financial investment. Or involvement with financialisation and the people, companies or institutions promoting and benefiting from it generally.
Lower maintenance and running costs mean ‘tiny-housers’ can work less and dedicate more time to other activities. For many, with their home placed in the right location, this can also mean breaking the cycle of dependency on corporate or state provision of life's other basic needs.
Finding more time to become self-sustaining, to grow and provide more food and energy security can make tiny houses a cure for many other ills. Faced with the same climate crises as everyone else, location is key to just how much change they can facilitate.
But being movable, having no foundations, is fundamental in responding to their impacts too. Being temporary is an asset not a flaw, particularly where woodlands, greenfield sites and local authority planning permissions are concerned.
As a movement, tiny houses draw on the ideas of researchers like Gaber (2021), Soper (2020), Holloway (2010) and Gibson-Graham (2006), who theorise how structural change emerges from within people's everyday experiences. From this perspective, people in the movement are actively creating change, forging living alternatives in the here and now.
Yet this takes place against the backdrop of wider economic, social, political and existential struggles, both conflicting with and complementing each other. These emphasise the why of the movement’s ‘slow burn’, with alternative modes of housing and living constrained or potentially co-opted by the prevailing ‘culture of real estate’ (Hanan, 2010).
In many ways, the counter-cultural potential of the tiny house movement is being, has been, hollowed out by hegemonic cultural messaging, about self-optimisation and individual responsibility. With all of the foregoing considered, two pertinent questions regarding tiny houses arise:
How does the tiny house movement prefigure a viable and visible alternative to prevailing approaches to housing (and, by extension, to how we perceive what a ‘home’ is) that characterise ‘rich’ or ‘developed’ societies?
And how should alternative modes of living, of housing, of home, operate alongside and in spite of those same prevailing trends, even as they are being colonised by them?
By attempting to answer these questions, it may be possible to understand what the tiny house movement could genuinely mean for attempts to envision a more just and equitable approach to housing, to home. Moreover, to also envision homes ruggedised against increasingly uncertain futures.
Pt 2 is dedicated to attempting to find those answers. While you wait, if your so inclined, enjoy this beautiful tiny house in its own food forest…