This interview with author Kieran Yates appeared in Volume 10 of our subscriber magazine, which went out in our Winter 2024 book box.
All the Houses I've Ever Lived is a fresh take on Britain's housing crisis, written by London-based journalist, Kieran Yates. Part memoir and part manifesto for change, the book asks you to rethink the politics of family.
We spoke to Kieran in November 2024.
Image © Vicky Grout vickygrout.com
Your book has been described as part-memoir, part rally cry. Was it an easy decision to blend your own story with an exploration of Britain’s broken housing system or did you hesitate about hanging the structure of the book around your own life?
It was necessary, I think, to include memoir because housing is - by design - a notoriously difficult part of law to understand. I always thought it was important to have the cultural imprint of Janet Jackson and the Spice Girls and Chicago house for example, because home is full of what we put in it - and that includes music.
Your family is tightly sewn into the book, weaving in and out of your own story, variously present and absent, some your genetic family and others the friends, neighbours, flatmates and boyfriends who make up your wider chosen family. What does family mean to you?
Family, whether that’s biological or one that you build for yourself is so much about sharing space, opening up doors and rooms and making home for you. Sometimes that’s your mum painstakingly making net curtains to conceal you and sometimes that’s your friends making an alien place feel like you belong there. Having my friends show me how to love aspects of the countryside changed my outlook forever.
Between the lines and even when she wasn’t overtly present, the story of all the houses you’ve ever lived in seemed to us to also be the story of your mother, trying to create a safe environment in which to raise children after being disowned by her own family. Did writing the book give you a different perspective on what it was like for her? What did she think of the book?
She liked it...eventually! During the writing process she was a bit worried that she was coming across badly until I explained that it was the fault of the state for being so negligent. But she liked the cover and apparently that’s very important.
The concepts of home and family are obviously closely linked. All children deserve a stable home in which to live if they’re to have a fair chance of experiencing the comfort of family life and the many benefits it can bring. But, as you’ve shown, there can still be family without home.
Are there things you gained from having a peripatetic childhood and was there anything you missed out on that still impacts you now?
There was a lot of negotiation which I talk about in the book - “If I do well on my maths homework can we stay?” kind of thing. I think it helped me as a journalist because I notice loads of details about so many homes that I’m invited into whether that’s a Cath Kidston tea towel or fake gold tissue box. The fragmentation has made it easier for me to feel at home quickly, I think. And to realise that home is beautiful and when it’s not available so much is lost.
At its best, when housing policy puts families at the heart of its design, social housing takes on some of the role of the family.
The parts of the book when you describe living on the Green Man Lane estate paint a vivid picture of this. Are these kinds of built environments, designed to create a place where children are part of a wider protective network, gone forever?
Is it idealistic to hope that as a society we have the will to create homes like these again or are we irreversibly in the era of private housing and home ownership?
I don’t think they are gone forever, but they have been neglected and this neglect sometimes has devastating circumstances - you can see this from temporary accommodation to mould disrepair to the tragedy at Grenfell tower. We have to keep advocating for the importance of these resources with good quality social housing and long term good housing that protects and supports families. So that’s everything from warm housing to a living room to strong support - and any political will has to come from repetition and loud voices.
Alongside the stories of your own life you include the reality of, and statistics about, the housing market, one of which is that one in six ethnic minority families in the UK have a home with a category 1 hazard, a category 1 hazard being one where the serious harm outcome is likely to include permanent paralysis, loss of limb or death.
Are we raising a generation of children with PTSD? And if we can’t fix the housing system, what other protections should we be focused on to help these children overcome this gross inequality?
We need better quality housing but we also need to reject any right-wing political narrative that uses housing as a way of dividing which harms people of colour disproportionately.
What do you make of the government’s commitment in the recent budget to building more homes and the £500m top-up for the Affordable Homes Programme? Are they focused on home ownership to the detriment of a more sustainable and effective housing policy? Where would you put resources if you were in charge?
Like I say in my book, I think the government is a place to advocate for change but not the only place. Community organisations are so crucial because people win against rogue landlords all the time! Whenever I’m at community meetings I hear about people doing rent strikes and filing disrepair claims and pushing back against discrimination, and I feel hopeful.
The government’s plans are ambitious as so far no targets have been met. There are a lot of areas which need change but to start I think money has to go towards enacting a landlord register, making sure the tenants rights bill is honoured (although it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what is needed), a clear definition of disrepair for court claims, an abolition of the right to rent and money for disabled activists, architects and parts of the education system to feed in. That’s just a start!
You’ve said that the advance for the book and the fact that you’re now married means your housing situation has changed radically. Does this new security give you new insights into the impact to physical and mental health, and to life prospects, of living without the security of a permanent, safe and warm home?
Well it’s made me understand just how connected things are and the reality of the country we live in.
For example, landlords set high market rates so they not only exploit rental tenants with high rents but this raises the cost of homes so homeowners have high priced properties to choose from. Also the idea of security is a fallacy because it depends on so many factors, the economy, the ability to keep paying a mortgage and the fact that the bank - not you - owns the house you live in for many people, including me. So I hope for a feeling of security of course!
But I also know precarity is close for everyone.
What advice would you give to anyone struggling in poor quality rented housing? Are there practical steps they can take to improve their situation?
Join a renters union! LRU do great work as do Acorn and HASL. So do some research and join regardless of your housing situation. Strength together.
What’s next for you? Do you have plans for another book?
Campaigning and writing for now - rest when it makes sense and hope for a better world.