In the Hot Seat with Jack Ithell

Jack Ithell

Homelessness in a Time of Climate Change 

In the Hot Seat is Shade the UK’s new interview series, where we sit down with experts across industry and academia to learn more about their work and its overlap with the climate crisis. Not only are we speaking to climate experts, but we also want to take a look into how various sectors are being impacted by overheating and share these stories more widely. 

In our most recent interview, we got to know Jack Ithell, Communications & Fundraising Manager at the homelessness charity Evolve Housing + Support. Together, we looked into what his organisation is doing to tackle the growing problem of homelessness across the UK and how his work is increasingly impacted by the effects of climate change. Read on to find out more. 

Hi Jack! I’m so glad you could join today! 

Would you be able to describe your work at Evolve Housing + Support, the services you provide, and a summary of your professional background? How did you get into this industry? 

Evolve Housing + Support is a supported housing provider and homelessness charity, meaning in practice that we own and rent properties, and we accommodate people in those properties that either have been homeless or are at risk of homelessness. Our model works by the individual in question being referred to us by a local authority – they can then stay with us for a period of up to two years in our accommodation. 

While they are with us, they receive access to various other forms of support as well, designed to help them leave homelessness behind for good. The services we provide include mental health support, work and learning support, educational support, and support getting back in touch with loved ones. This last one is very important, as homelessness can often cause people to become disconnected from their networks. 

Throughout their time with us, we help them to find and prepare for their own independent accommodation. We really want to build what we call ‘financial resilience’, which could mean a lot of things - finding full-time employment, going into a training course, or having access to all the government support they are entitled to. We want to ensure that everyone receives support that is uniquely tailored to them, allowing them to move on from us when they are ready. 

In terms of how I got into this work, my background has always been in non-profit work. I have been in this role for the past three years and, prior to that, I held various development and communications roles at other charities. 

Were these charities also dedicated to homelessness work? 

They were not, no. I have worked in international humanitarian work, in climate change, and other organisations working for social justice. 

For me, homelessness is one of those issues that, when someone really stops to think about it, should not exist. There is enough money in the country and in the world that it feels like there must be a better way, that it could clearly be preventable. 

Part of the reason that I am in this line of work is that the question around why it exists is both interesting and worrying. That, and the fact that it could happen to anyone; the right combination of factors could all align very quickly to those who might have thought that it would never affect them, despite the fact that everyone could and should be insulated from it. 

And what would you say are the biggest drivers of homelessness in the UK? 

The main driver seems to be the lack of affordable, high-quality housing. This presents a double challenge since, not only might you not be able to find somewhere else to live if you have to leave your previous place but, more importantly, it prevents people from moving on from homelessness once it has already started. 

If there is nowhere suitable to move on to, then there is very little that anyone can do. You become stuck in this limbo until you can gain access to affordable property. But, if there isn’t enough, then there is no getting around that. 

That is seemingly a common thread that runs through homelessness. 

For the people that we work with, we find that mental health issues and past trauma are very common. About three-quarters of people we support would identify as either having experienced past trauma or having an ongoing mental health issue, rates far higher than the wider population. 

The third main reason is often around family breakdown. For instance, if someone has recently split up with their partner, is young and has fallen out with their parents, or has been in a situation with someone who is abusive or dangerous, that can cause someone to become homeless. 

What I would like to understand, for the unique services that you provide at Evolve, is how successful they have been? How have they impacted the lived experiences of the homeless population? 

Organisations such as ours use different models and frameworks to inform the support that we deliver, based on the type of people we support. By that, we mean we have a particular focus on types of support based on the type of people that are coming to us. 

We have a few models that are integrated by each service that are informed by psychological best practice, that we found particularly useful. For example, we have a trauma-informed framework that shapes every question that we ask people when they arrive, which allows us to develop a certain support plan for every single person when they are here. This is alongside the PERMA model that we also use, which focuses on the positive goals and aspirations that each person has. 

These frameworks, informed by current psychological best practice, show that we are using approaches that are clinically proven to help those in need. This marks a shift from how homelessness support has worked in the past - sometime ago, you would have an individual come in and, traditionally at least, you would lay out for them the issues that they have and what they need to do to fix them. This is an outdated model. It didn’t seem to work because it blamed people for their problems, which itself just made them shut down. 

Alternatively, we now don’t tell people that they must do XYZ - unless it surrounds helping them with dangerous behaviour - but we help develop tailored plans for each of them, measuring success in the manner that they want. For example, we could see that someone’s goal is to be in full-time education in six months, so we figure out how to get there together. 

So, our work is probably quite distinctive from lots of others in the sector. We are very proud of what we do. 

In terms of how our work plays out, we estimate that we move on between 60% and 70% of people a year into their own properties. 

Now, moving on from the specific services you provide, I want to dig into the overlap between your work and climate change. As a very broad question, how would you describe the unique challenges that the homeless population faces in this country as a result of climate change? 

The main one is exposure and a lack of protection, meaning both extreme heat and extreme cold can pose a life-threatening risk to people who are homeless. This is a problem relatively unique to this group, because while other people can become exposed to the elements, people who are homeless are least able to shelter from it. 

But there are all sorts of other intersections between homelessness and climate change. 

Of course, if you are rough sleeping then your physical risk and your physical exposure are very high but, as we know, a lot of people in the UK who are homeless are not rough sleeping - they may be in temporary accommodation, in hotels, in bed and breakfasts, or they are in large blocks of flats. Unfortunately, a number of these buildings are poorly maintained. What this means is that people can end up stuck in accommodation that has all sorts of problems that can be exacerbated by extreme weather. 

So, you might be in a block of flats with mould and very poor heating, you could be in a hotel where you have no control over the temperature. 

Then there is also an issue around where the majority of the homeless population live. Many, but certainly not all, live in large urban areas, meaning that air pollution can be a real challenge. Particularly as many might have underlying health issues that would make them more susceptible to its effects. This might not be related necessarily to extreme heat or cold, but is a phenomenon brought about by unsustainable and polluting practices. 

One issue that can occur when conditions outside are bad, particularly for women, is that they might feel pressure to stay with people in compromising situations, as an alternative to sleeping rough and so they can get a bed for the night. That is not to say anyone is doing anything in particular, but many might find themselves in dangerous settings where they may feel pressured to behave in certain ways. 

The last thing I want to mention is around the stress associated with extreme weather. If you are in a position where the weather can potentially harm you, it puts a ticking clock on every day where people feel they have a deadline by which they need to secure some kind of indoor accommodation. This takes a huge toll on people’s mental state and wellbeing. They will be spending the vast majority of their day trying to find somewhere safe to be. 

For my next question, you touched on it slightly in your answer there. Many people who are homeless suffer from pre-existing health conditions, particularly mental health conditions. Could you tell me a bit more about the overlap between climate change, heatwaves, and mental health in the homeless population? 

The first thing I want to say on this is that it happens in different orders to different people. By that I mean either climate change can lead to additional mental health issues, or they can exist first and get worsened by the position that they find themselves in. 

In the first instance, let’s take London. Here in London, approximately 50% of people who are rough sleeping are not originally from the UK. This means that a large number of the people we are talking about have come from overseas. As climate change affects other countries, it will mean that people that are homeless in the UK will have already been directly affected by it elsewhere. So, as you get migration as a result of climate change, you will have more people in the UK who have had to leave their homes and their families, something we are already seeing. 

Having to deal with these issues and the mental toll it takes before they arrive in this country is bad enough, yet gets compounded by the fact that they become homeless when arriving. 

And it is fairly widely accepted that migration as a result of climate change is only going to increase in the next few years. 

In the second instance, and I received a lot of input from my colleagues on this, is the fact that much of the homeless population does not feel safe for the most part anyway. This stress leads them to have various mental health issues. Factoring in the weather on top of that just adds another layer on top of that stress. It is not that it necessarily creates whole new problems, even though in some cases it can, it is an additional threat on top of those that already existed. 

When it comes to the suite of services that you offer, are there any which are either specific to or have been adapted because of the effects of climate change or heatwaves? 

That’s a very good question. Yes, I would say we have, but more indirectly than directly. We have certainly completed a lot of retrofitting on a number of our buildings, meaning that when people are staying in our buildings, we have put in a lot of work to make sure that they are as cool as possible in summer, and vice versa in the winter. 

That said, we don’t really work with people on how to mitigate the impacts of climate change directly. I think that, because it is not on so many people’s radars, it is not something that is directly addressed. It is more of an incidental thing that comes up. 

We would, for instance, work with people on how best to report issues with their accommodation, for instance if there were the presence of mould or a heating issue. Whilst these are associated with climatic changes, they are more knock-on effects and more reflect the fact that our housing stock is not good enough. 

That is probably the extent of our work currently in that area. 

In that case, would you be able to identify any areas of your work that could be adapted to be more responsive to climate change and its effects? 

One thing I think we can do, and which we have started doing to an extent, is in responding to the changes in employment opportunities that it brings up. 

Looking into the green economic transition and the kinds of roles that it offers, we see some space for future opportunities. We know that as the economy shifts to one that focuses more on green principles, new careers that require new skills will emerge that didn’t exist before. Many people impacted by homelessness are actively looking to retrain or to find new work and we recognise that the green sector, particularly amongst the young people that we work with, is of great interest here. 

We therefore might look into supporting people to retrain for greener careers, and are looking into finding specialist training for stuff like that so that people can understand how to start a career there. It doesn’t make sense for us to be setting people up for the world as it was five years ago. 

There is much that can be done to alleviate the suffering from the effects of extreme weather, whether that is in the provision of emergency services or in adapting cities to be more resilient to the effects of high temperatures. What would you like to see happen to safeguard the homeless population during periods of high heat? 

We as a team had a few thoughts on this. The first was that, as far as we know, there is no formal structure for getting people in and off the streets when there is extreme heat. It has happened in the past, but entirely on an ad hoc basis. 

If it is cold outside, then there is a severe weather emergency protocol that gets activated. These are very clear, tried-and-tested processes for getting people off the streets and into safe accommodation. Almost immediately, it seems we can find emergency spaces for the homeless if it is dangerously cold outside, and we would like to see a response similar to that made available for extreme heat. 

Another idea would be in the greening of public spaces. Of course, we don’t want anyone rough sleeping in the first place, but that’s not always possible, so we need to ensure that public spaces are developed using planning rules that make them usable no matter the weather. For instance, if you concrete over a huge area, you will inevitably get big puddles and heat traps, which makes it difficult to just exist in that space. 

Greenery can negate those effects quite strongly. We are not experts in this field, but the use of soil, trees, and plant life can cool areas and provide shade. It can also reduce the risk of flooding. 

Lastly, we also need to improve London’s housing stock. As I said before, even if someone is off the streets, they might be staying somewhere that is simply not fit for purpose. This is actually true for many people, not just those who are homeless, but if someone has an extremely limited budget or is living in temporary accommodation, then these issues are going to be exacerbated. 

But how do we get past this? Yes, certain people in certain positions are making the right noises about it, but there are so many roadblocks in the way. For one, retrofitting is prohibitively expensive, so trying to push this across even a fraction of our housing stock seems implausible for now. For another, there is a lack of land that we can build on. So, it might be important to change the rules and regulations around planning and development to free plots up. This might be happening, but only slowly. 

We are getting towards the end of our questions now. 

As part of our interview series, we don’t just want to glean the insights and perspectives from the experts that we speak to, but we would also like to generate more of a dialogue between industry and academia. 

If you were to ask a question of a climate or heatwave academic in our series, what would that be? 

That’s interesting, because it’s not an intersection we usually think about possibly as much as we should.

I think the question I would ask would be around housebuilding and what the homes of the future look like. For example, how do you climate-proof the homes of the future? How do you make sure that people can stay warm or stay cool for a reasonable price, without spending exorbitant amounts in the first place? 

It would be a joint question between what the future of sustainable housing looks like and how we can make it affordable. 

Jack, thank you so much for your time today!