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Oscar became homeless in two ways: first suddenly, then gradually. It began in 2016, when he walked in on his wife having sex with his best friend. Oscar, which is not his real name, couldn’t stay in his home after that. He slept at a friend's until they argued about the affair. Under pressure, he missed shifts at the restaurant where he worked on a zero-hours contract.
Yet even as Oscar fell into homelessness, he was given a push by the bureaucracy of the state. He lost his job; but he was moving a lot, so the Jobcentre letter went to the wrong place. When he missed his appointment, his benefits were stopped for four weeks.
Another time, the Department for Work and Pensions failed to update his details. On that occasion, his benefits were stopped for 13 weeks.
According to the charity Shelter, there are now more than 300,000 people in Britain without adequate housing, a figure which has risen every year since 2010. Some are in dingy hostels, others on cold, wet pavements. At the age of 41, exhausted and out of options, Oscar became a rough sleeper. For those in this situation, life expectancy is just 47.
What could have prevented his slide into homelessness? When designer and architect Chris Hildrey asked himself this question, the answer rested on one simple fact: Oscar hadn’t just lost his home; he’d lost his address.
“When you become homeless, all the services you need, you can't access, because you don't have an address,” says Hildrey, who is currently exhibiting at the Design Museum in London, where he is one of four designers in residence. For his residency, he has created a system called ProxyAddress. Its radical aim: to give every homeless person in the UK their very own address.
To understand how ProxyAddress works, it helps, first, to think about Father Christmas. Each year, some 800,000 British children send him letters, using Royal Mail’s special address: “Santa/Father Christmas, Santa’s Grotto, Reindeerland XM4 5HQ”. The actual destination is a sorting office in Belfast. But – and this is the point – it could be anywhere. All Royal Mail would have to do is change a line in its database.
“Addresses don’t belong to properties,” says Hildrey. “If you buy a property, do you own address? No. The council comes up with street name, Royal Mail comes up with the postcode. It’s just a code, a public code.” A code that could, conceivably, be turned to a different use.
ProxyAddress takes addresses that aren’t being used and gives them to homeless people. They don’t get the property, but they do get the address – which remains the same even as they move around. The trick? Using Royal Mail’s redirection service to alter the underlying destination.
The change would not just help with letters. For some time, addresses have been far more than a way of just finding places – they are also a system of identification, of proving that you are who you say you are. Without an address, you can’t open a bank account or get a driving licence. You also can’t get a library card or a mobile phone contract, which makes it extremely difficult to access the internet. It’s very hard to get employment.
"If you use your local Jobcentre, you will be required to have various documents proving your identity and your address," says Melissa Kerschen of Glass Door, a charity which provides shelter and support to London's homeless population. "And if you lose your identification documents or they are stolen — as people who live on the street often have happen — then it’s one more thing you need an address to sort."
Like many people working to alleviate homelessness, Kerschen, who says the church where Glass Door is based receives "between a dozen and 60 pieces of mail" a day for the 1,500-plus people who use it as a postal address, refers to the situation as a catch-22. Hildrey puts it simply: "The very reason you need support is the reason you can't get it."
ProxyAddress grew out of Hildrey’s frustration with architectural practice. A graduate of UCL’s prestigious Bartlett school of architecture, he’d worked with Foster & Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects and OMA – but something was missing. “You become aware of your lack of agency,” he says. “You see social housing not being built where it should be, or vast master-planning happening in a way that doesn't really help the city.”
In early 2017, the Design Museum put out a call for proposals with the one-word brief: “support”. Hildrey wanted to respond with something that challenged austerity cuts, but he was afraid about stepping into uncomfortable territory. “I was worried about being too naive,” he recalls. “I remember being warned: ‘Don't design a better tent’.”
It wasn’t easy. Hildrey’s first idea – sticking postboxes to the back of street signs – had a distinctly tent-ish air. “It was terrible,” he says. “I'm an architect. I'm used to making things.” Then, during a visit to the Royal Mail’s London sorting office, he saw something that changed his mind. To be precise, he saw how Santa got his mail.
“That was the real turning point,” he recalls. “I realised it wasn’t about post, it was about identity. It's about data flows.”
There was an even closer parallel: the British Forces Post Office. Armed forces and their families living on bases are given special address codes, called BFPO numbers, to use when receiving mail. Letters and parcels go to the central military sorting office, which sends them on to the correct place. The person moves, but the code stays the same.
Even more pertinently, the BFPO had just changed its method of addressing. Servicemen and women complained that many websites didn’t accept the codes – and that going without a UK address for years while they were aboard made it harder to get jobs and credit when they returned. So, in 2012, Royal Mail turned the BFPO numbers into UK-style postcodes, based in the fictional UK town of “BFPO”.
“It occurred to me,” says Hildrey, “that's actually similar to what I'm doing. The difference is there's lots of goodwill towards service people. But there isn't goodwill towards homelessness.”
Until his visit to Royal Mail's sorting office, Hildrey was fighting the absurdity of the addressing bureaucracy. Now he realised he could use the system to achieve his goal.
At first, he planned to give homeless people addresses that didn’t exist. Using postcode data, he found that 34 per cent of all streets in the UK with a number 14 don't have a number 13 – a figure rising to 74 per cent in superstitious Birmingham. (Apparently people don’t like to live in number 13, so they ask the council if they can make a change.) But imaginary addresses didn’t fit easily into Royal Mail’s verification system. So, instead, he alighted on a different set of addresses: ones that exist, but aren’t being used.
“Councils have had 40 per cent cuts since 2010,” he says. “But one thing they have lots of is empty, unused addresses. One in 10 retail properties in the UK are vacant. There are 500,000 empty homes, and 200,000 have been empty for over six months; 11,000 for over a decade.” Repossession is difficult and expensive. Seizing the address is relatively simple. (As addresses are made of combinations of names and places, the owner wouldn't even need to know.)
ProxyAddress is an SSL-secured database comprising the addresses, their associated usernames, that person’s current location, and the history for the account. Homeless people can change their address online, via email, or by text message. They can also let third parties, such credit reference agencies or DWP, view the information. The database is cheap to run, so Hildrey expects the cost to be minimal, especially compared to the £24-30,000 each case of homelessness is estimated to cost the public sector per year.
Hildrey is currently working with Royal Mail and Lewisham council to turn ProxyAddress into a proof of concept. He’s had a warm response – because the idea comes along at a good time. The government is bringing in the Homelessness Reduction Act, which requires councils to provide personal housing plans for anyone “threatened with homelessness” within 56 days (as opposed to the existing 28 days). “Everyone's struggling to make it meaningful at the moment because there isn't enough social housing,” says Hildrey. “I suggested to local authorities, well, you could give them an address.”
Of course, homelessness can't be solved with addresses alone. “You still need somewhere to get your mail,” says Glass Door's Kerschen. “But at least you taken away the first barrier for registering with services. It’s not going to solve everything, but it’s a piece of the jigsaw that can help give individuals a bit of their identity back.”
That identity wouldn't just be bureaucratic. Talking to people in day centres, Hildrey was surprised to discover the strength of the mere symbol of housing. An address wasn't a home, but it did at least reach towards it. “It’s something to put your name against, even if it's just an idea of belonging,” he says. “That’s so important.”
It was in that day centre where Hildrey met Oscar. “I get my post here most of the time,” Oscar told him. “They’re good here, they keep it all for me. But it’s not great for getting a job. You should try applying somewhere with ‘Homeless Shelter’ in your address. They judge you before they even know you.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
