Prince William defends the homeless

The heir to the throne shows what it means to be a Christian nation, writes George Pitcher

When I first arrived in London in the Seventies I was “of no fixed address”, as the police would describe the circumstance of homelessness (and, in my case, sometimes did). I dossed, I surfed sofas and when I was broke I paid “rent” unconventionally in kind.

I’ve slept rough in the UK and across Europe, though I don’t recall ever sleeping rough in London, other than part of a night at King’s Cross station, before being turfed out and finding a seedy local boarding house.

I never felt homeless, significantly because I had an elder sister that I knew would be available to take me in and often did. But, strictly speaking, I didn’t have a home to call my own, somewhere to hang my hat. I mean that literally – I learned that a hat is very important on the streets in January.

Invisible homelessness

I was fit, educated and spoke the language, so I had prospects. These are other factors that made me feel very far from homeless. But take those away – imagine having no friends and family here, suffering mental or physical ill health, struggling to communicate – and we may begin to understand what Prince William means by hidden or invisible homelessness.

Self-redistributive: Putting homes where his mouth is

Those, particularly the young, who are not yet on the streets, but are dossing with mates, sleeping in cars, finding a hostel or a refuge. This, for me, was the most telling part of his interview with last weekend’s Sunday Times, in which he let it be known that he’s launching his own homelessness initiative through his Royal Foundation, with a bold lifelong ambition of “ending homelessness.”

Shamefully possible

Yes it’s bold, but it’s all too shamefully possible to end homelessness. Our Government actually did so, temporarily, during the covid pandemic. To prevent street infections in 2020, it threw just a few million quid (just £3.2m in extra funding is the claim, though it’s disputed) at the problem in a scheme with a delightfully unintentional Christological name, Everyone In, and claimed proudly that it had got some 90% of the homeless off the streets. In some cities, those sleeping rough fell to zero.

When lockdowns were over, the Government threw them out on the streets again. There’s a strange strain in neo-liberal thinking that citizens should be free to impoverish themselves, without any duty of care for inquiring why they should be doing so, but that’s a matter for another time.

Doing something about it

For now, I want to applaud someone at the far other end of the economic scale, William, for precisely making that inquiry and resolving to do something about it. It seems to me that his ambition is not only achievable (£3.2m index-linked per year anyone?) but absolutely appropriate for the heir to the throne and, as such, a future head of state.

One could dwell on the contrast with his father, King Charles, whose extraordinary experimental new town in Dorset, Poundbury, may have more to do with social engineering and nostalgic architecture than with solving homelessness. Poundbury does have some social housing, but the comparison is unkind for another reason – the Prince’s Trust, which Charles founded, has an impressive record of training young people for work, many of whom otherwise might have been on the streets.

William’s campaign nevertheless directly takes aim at the charge that those who live in palaces know nothing of homelessness. He’s starting small, but he is using his own estates to house the homeless. This might, in socio-economic terms, be termed self-redistributive.

Still a Christian country

And it’s in keeping with what is (still) called a Christian nation, whose monarch remains Defender of the Faith, as the King’s recent coronation affirmed, whatever its nods to post-modern multiculturalism.

If William recognises that, it’s to be celebrated. Not just because it’s Christian tradition to shelter the homeless, but because that tradition comes from the heart of the Christian narrative.

The Holy Family are homeless at the start of the gospel, so the Christ child is born in accommodation for animals. They have a home, in Nazareth, which is why we call that child the Nazarene, but they’re displaced by the cruel economy of the prevailing Roman regime (which incidentally qualifies them precisely as William’s invisible homeless).

Fleeing murderous oppression

Similarly, in the account of Matthew, that family has to flee from murderous oppression into neighbouring Egypt. Here again is displacement homelessness, but let’s note in passing that they are also refugees, who need help, our help, not “migrants” to be despised.

The child grew to tell those who chose to pay attention that “foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head”. There is more to unpack in that statement than space allows, but it’s sufficient to say that our faith identifies intrinsically with the homeless, stateless and hopeless.

One might expect that from the Nazarene. But to hear it from Prince William is an unexpected and joyous surprise.

George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest