But we should also look for answers beyond government to how we dig ourselves out of this quagmire. The state might provide social housing, but it does not grant freedom from inequality. Policy may be a starting point for change, but it is a place rather than the place to focus our attention. We could focus on community solutions, such as joining tenants’ unions or simply teaching young people about housing admin. We should invite radical housing design solutions, through collectives such as Decolonise Architecture, the DisOrdinary Architecture Project, and initiatives ensuring our homes can commit to green targets as we face down the climate emergency. We've all had our share of dodgy landlords, mould and awkward house shares. But journalist Kieran Yates has had more than most: by the age of twenty-five she'd lived in twenty different houses across the country, from council estates in London to car showrooms in rural Wales. By the age of twenty-five journalist Kieran Yates had lived in twenty different houses across the country, from council estates in London to car showrooms in rural Wales. I explored the archives a lot looking at these stories, but this is always happening: when I was writing about bailiff resistance, I read about what is happening now with Migrants Organise and groups who are resisting bailiffs and resisting the Home Office. So at every corner of the crisis that I talk about, there is some kind of resistance, and this has been a persistent historical undercurrent. What I learned is that policy is not the place to solve our problems, and actually, it’s those community networks and grassroots resistances which are going to save us. By the age of twenty-five journalist Kieran Yates had lived in twenty different houses across the country, from council estates in London to car showrooms in rural Wales. And in that time, between a series of evictions, mouldy flats and bizarre house-share interviews, the reality of Britain's housing crisis grew more and more difficult to ignore.

The housing crisis we find ourselves in hollows out many communities like the Green Man Lane estate. After we left the estate, those early lessons in negligence and housing precarity followed me. I would have to memorise a postcode many, many more times in my life. All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In is at once a rallying cry for change, a gorgeous coming-of-age story and a love letter to home in all its forms. A powerful, personal and intricate tour of our housing system ... exposing who it works for and who it doesn't' -- Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP Creative Access book club at Simon & Schuster office! The author Kieran Yates joined us for an interview and Q&A before our wider book club discussion!It is hard to extract tender memories from my estate, which faced so many years of neglect, and as I write is boarded up, sealed and prepped for demolition. The Green Man Lane estate was built in 1977 and was one of many postwar social housing experiments, representing a time when there was a push for increased social housing in Britain.

And when I lived in a mouldy room, I thought that was completely normal to be demonised and to be told that you should just open a window.

Yates deftly switches between unsentimental fondness about their rapidly multiplying temporary domestic set-ups (their first home on West Ealing’s Green Man Lane Estate is evoked with particular finesse and boldness) and clear-sighted rage at the degradation of a “safety net of social housing [that] is being frayed to nothing”. Perhaps it’s my own familiarity with some of the homes she finds herself in, but her personal stories are told so intimately, with the data peppered in so well that it feels completely natural. All The Houses I’ve Ever Lived is a beautiful and fascinating memoir of what ‘home’ really means and a commentary of the current workings (and failings) of the housing system in Britain. As a result, I’d expected cooler-than-thou tenants to be occupying our old rooms and, indeed, they were two interesting musicians, living with their three-year-old son. Six months earlier, however, they’d all been made homeless, only relocated here after a spell 10 miles further away, in Ilford, far away from their family and friends. Six years later we sold our first house for more than two-and-half times what we paid

By knitting together her own personal experiences with those of others, Yates paints a picture of how Britain’s housing crisis is creating lives that are shunted from house to house, and the psychological ruptures and disruptions that relentless moving gives us.

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A beautiful exposition of home and what it means. Yates infuses such gentle care and humanity into the exploration of race, the failings of society and government ... Stunning' -- Bolu Babalola, author of 'Love in Colour' In our imaginations, our house sale also offered us a new kind of life. It let us move to a part of the world we’d always loved and allowed my husband the chance to give up a demanding job. Our neighbours aren’t night-time tube workers whom we never properly met, but a farmer in his 80s, half a mile away, and an orchard occasionally occupied by sheep. This is a book that explores how it feels to move and some of the reasons we feel a sense of nostalgia about our old homes. We inhabit the spaces we are in. They give something to us and we give something to them, too.'

Nostalgia is simplistic and selective when we try to locate the past, so it’s no surprise that my memories also evaporated, strangely, when I walked through that front door. Our old garden had been sold, too, and another house built on the land. Kids didn’t play on the roundabout any more, either, the owner told me; she had a six-year-old daughter and she wouldn’t let her outside with all the speeding cars. Neither did people pop in and out of each other’s houses and we speculated about why this was. She suggested that they keep themselves to themselves because of needing to rest after long hours at work. I also thought about the easy comforts of TVs and technology that turn our homes into coops in which we hide away from the world. I loved hearing about Yates' life, I especially loved hearing about her mum. Although, I know this was not the point of this book, I would have loved to hear more about her mum and the relationship they created. We definitely got a feel for their relationship but I would've liked to know how creating a home differs when you are a mother, the pressure to create a home for others even when you do not want too. Maybe a potential idea for a sequel? Prospective housemates asked me whether I liked Coldplay or Pedro Almodóvar films to decipher whether I was a worthy candidate. At one viewing at a housing co-op, I was told that everyone did one big shop on a Sunday, group dinners were mandatory, and there had to be a liberal approach to drug use – gesturing to the fluorescent green bong in the living room and (numerous) copies of Mr Nice on the shelf. Sure enough, after I looked at the (admittedly spacious) room, I was asked one last, hopeful question: “So, do you take acid?” Yates is a tenacious reporter and covers a great deal of ground, from the politics of interior design and soul-crushing “housemate interviews” to the discriminatory practices of landlords up and down the country. One of the strongest sections hinges on the still unfurling tragedy of Grenfell.

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Being in this flat made me realise, more than ever, that a home is not just about a house but about the networks that surround it. Dan, the young father of this family, was born and brought up in Dalston, his mother living in social housing nearby. Homelessness had happened suddenly to him, his partner and child, and the distance they experienced from support, in all senses, was tough.