Debt trap nation: family homelessness in a failing state - Katherine Brickell and Melanie Nowicki

Across England, one of the wealthiest yet most unequal nations in the world, families are being trapped in debt and homelessness. In this blistering expose, Professor Katherine Brickell and Professor Melanie Nowicki take the reader inside this national scandal. Hundreds of thousands of children are living in "prison-like" hotel rooms and other deadly temporary accommodation for months, years and sometimes their entire childhood.

The lecture offers an intimate and politically energised account of a failing state in technicolour. The decimation of social housing, an out-of-control private-rented sector, austerity, welfare cuts and a cost-of-living crisis has deepened poverty and fed a debt trap that consumes families and is now driving local authorities to bankruptcy.

Mothers and their children have not fallen into this trap, they have been pulled into it. The personal and sobering stories recounted here reveal how government choices have forced these mothers and survivors of domestic abuse into impossible hardship.

The lecture will ask audience members to rail against state-cultivated and politically convenient stigma that equates debt and homelessness with personal moral failure. It is time to flip the script. It is not women who are failing, women are being failed.

About the speakers

Katherine Brickell is Professor of Urban Studies at King’s College London and is best known for her feminist-oriented geographical research on home and domestic life. She has a decade of experience co-researching family homelessness and Temporary Accommodation in London, Greater Manchester, and Dublin.

Katherine is Editor of the flagship journal Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and was previously Editor of Gender, Place and Culture.

Mel Nowicki is Reader in Urban Geography at Oxford Brookes University, and Visiting Reader in Urban Geography at King's College London. Her research explores the lived experience of housing precarity.

Her current research focuses on the rise of family homelessness and temporary accommodation in the UK and Ireland, and understanding how shrinking domestic space is shifting our expectations of home. Her first book, Bringing Home the Housing Crisis: Politics, Precarity and Domicide in Austerity London, was published by Bristol Policy Press in 2023.

Booking information

Monday night lectures are open to Fellows and Members and are included in the cost of membership.

Attending in-person

• All Fellows and Members wanting to attend in person must pre-book a free ticket. You will receive an e-ticket with a QR code that will be scanned on arrival. Your ticket can be shown on a mobile phone or printed. If you do not have a smartphone, we can find your name on the door list instead.
• Doors open at 5.30pm. Please use the Society's entrance on Exhibition Road. The lecture will begin at 6.30pm.
• Monday night lectures are held in person in the Ondaatje Theatre. The bar will be open in the Map Room before and after the lecture. Please be advised all payments are card only.
• The Ondaatje Theatre is fitted with a hearing loop. For the best quality sound we recommend sitting on the outside rows of the front seating section.
• There is step free access to the theatre. Wheelchair spaces can be booked in advance. If you have any questions about the venue, please contact events@rgs.org

Watch online

• You do not need to pre-book to watch the lecture online.
• All Monday night lectures are livestreamed via our website so you can watch them from wherever you are.

If you have any questions or require assistance with your booking, please email events@rgs.org

About Monday night lectures

Our Monday night lectures are exclusive to Fellows and Members and are included in the cost of membership. Members can book to attend the lectures in-person at the Society, or enjoy them live from the comfort of your own home.

These lectures are also recorded and uploaded to our website solely for members to catch up on whenever they like. If you would like to receive a weekly reminder email about the upcoming Monday night lecture, please sign up to our Updates about our Monday night lectures newsletter.

Accessibility at our events

We want everyone to feel welcome at our events. Key accessibility features of this event include:

• Step-free access to the event
• Accessible toilets
• Assistance dogs are welcome
• Hearing loop

For full details, please visit our accessibility page. If you have any questions or specific access requirements, feel free to get in touch with us on access@rgs.org