Ice, Fire & Information Disorder, quite the start to 25

Museum of Homelessness garden, January 2025

(3 min read)

News of the LA wildfires broke last week just as Museum of Homelessness was piloting the world's first Emergency Severe Cold shelter in a museum. When we heard about the terrifying wildfires our first thoughts were the residents of Skid Row, although it transpired that the fires were elsewhere in the city. We have been deeply sorry to read about the many thousands of people who have been made homeless. Climate displacement is accelerating and systems are not ready for it.

Our ongoing investigation Severe Weather Emergency shows how homelessness systems are not keeping up with the rapid development of the climate emergency.

We are under-prepared to support people who are already street homeless when major climate events take place. It’s a serious risk for our community in practical terms and our previous work to investigate severe weather provision has identified many problems. More broadly, the trauma and distress that comes from these events can mean an increased risk of scapegoating.

We are dismayed therefore but not surprised to see Fox News running the piece “Los Angeles mayor slashed fire budget last year, prioritized homeless population.” Blaming homeless people for society's problems is not new. However, this kind of messaging is something we need to keep challenging, especially in the context of Donald Trump’s plans to create ‘tent cities’ and enforce violently against the street homeless community. This punitive policy, straight out of Project 2025, has its roots in right wing think tank the Heritage Foundation which is also influential in the UK.

The climate emergency is caused by the excesses of contemporary capitalism, as is large-scale homelessness. This is a pure and simple fact. However, as things intensify, we are seeing lobbyists, billionaire media owners and politicians turn up the heat on our community, pun intended.

Homelessness and disinformation

It seems that one key strategy, as things continue to get worse climate-wise, will be to use divisive messaging and disinformation across mainstream news channels and social platforms such as X and Facebook to criminalise and blame our community. This is not currently as developed in the UK as it is in the USA and we remain committed to pushing back against it. We need to hold on to our common humanity, even more so in times of great distress, but the signs are not promising.

So what can we do, practically?

We are 2 weeks into 2025 and it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But remember, *Our solidarity is our most potent weapon*. There are grassroots groups all over the world, organising and resourcing their communities and we are no exception.

We can take action

Those of you who have supported our winter appeal or donated items or time this year, thank you. You are part of the solution. Our Winter Appeal is at more then 200% of target. Thanks to you, we have provided a brilliant 51 instances of an emergency warm bed so far this winter for our folks (and one lovely community dog)

emergency shelter in the museum

Our crew worked hard this last week piloting our Winter Shelter with the community and working out the best way of keeping each other safe in minus 4 conditions. This is the first time, to our knowledge that a museum has transformed into an emergency shelter. The atmosphere was convivial and compassionate, with many philosophical discussions over breakfast and dinner.

we can build communities not services

MoH’s first guests were able to support the crew in designing the processes that would help the museum be a shelter at night and a museum in the day. One guest volunteers at a local foodbank and generously brought bread, tea, biscuits, juice and toiletries for the shelter from his shift on Saturday. We have had fantastic support from the wider community as well, with coffee donated from Harris and Hoole and meat from Stella butchers.

We were full throughout the SWEP and we were working in partnership with other grassroots groups and small charities to support people who were left on the streets during the cold. To the right you can see Jane heading out into the night with cold weather gear. So we have spent the last 6 days providing shelter, hot food and emergency supplies to as many people as possible.

We can push for systems change

We also sent out almost 100 FOIs to councils last week for the next round of our Severe Weather Emergency investigation. The last one changed policy to introduce Hot SWEP for the first time ever. But we are still seeing gatekeeping, terrible processes and lack of humanitarian response that is leaving people out in the worst conditions.

We have a short window to get this right. In the UK we are so lucky. We are not dealing with anything like the wildfires or flash flooding we have seen elsewhere - yet. We need to prepare though and at the moment, the system is letting people down in more usual conditions. We need to do better.

Our next Severe Weather Emergency investigation will be published this summer and will hopefully lead to more change in life saving policy. In the meantime our work on the ground, in community, means that we are able to keep our people as safe as we can.

we can respond creatively

Thanks to everyone who is alongside us in this. As we face 2025 we have some serious things to respond to. But we believe it is possible, as long as we keep responding creatively and with compassion for ourselves and each other. This much we have seen in the last 6 days at our first ever museum Community SWEP shelter.