The Brighton Homeless Bill of Rights

Abstract

‘Homelessness’ in the UK, currently at record levels, is the focus of an ever-expanding mass of law, policy, procedures, practices, and institutions and enterprises of all sorts, from government, local government, national and local NGOs. All are implicated in the drive to keep houseless people in their place, obedient, out of sight, receiving assistance in the ‘appropriate’ way. This contribution is an account of a successful activist campaign to make a UK city adopt a Homeless Bill of Rights. It is unusual as a campaign using a legal discourse, that of human rights, not to create legally enforceable rights but as a political tool to force a different kind of visibility and equality. The political philosophy of Jacques Rancière helps to theorize these issues.