Housing battle ‘We work, we pay taxes – we just want a secure place to stay’

I’M not outside of society, even though people think I am, says Alex, firing up the hob and making a cup of tea. “I go to work, I come home, I pay my taxes, I don’t claim benefits – it’s literally just that I don’t want to live in a house.”

What that means for Alex, his friend Rach, and the other dozen or so people living in caravans and motorhomes gathered on a strip of wasteland on the edge of Bristol is complex.

It means a never-ending search for potential new places to live. It means going to work and not being certain when you set off for home again at the end of the day that your home will be in one piece, or there at all.

And now, on the eve of facing another move, Alex and Rach want to tell their story.

They have been living for the past month or so on a derelict wasteland of a site on the south-western edge of Bristol, between the city and Ashton Court. It’s the site of a long-closed down stonemasonry firm, with the Metrobus road one side and a railway line, cycle path and allotments the other.

And the irony is, this time the eviction notices come from Homes England, the Government agency who own the site and are tasked with building homes to solve the housing crisis in Bristol. Before that, many of the group had parked up their caravans and motorhomes in the yard of the former Avon and Somerset police mounted division stables, just up the road to Portishead.

Others were at a site nearer to Weston, some came from what grew into something of an encampment in a residential street in Greenbank.

Each person has their own history, and their own reasons, but for now, they are together.

“For some people it’s a necessity. For some people it’s a choice,” said Alex. “For some people it’s what they’ve been born into, it’s just their life. They might be second or third generation travellers.”

What they all have in common is that when they venture in to the city’s residential streets, it’s a lot more challenging than if they are able to find sites like this one, on the edge of the city.

“Here we’ve had no complaints, apart from obviously the owner of the land wanting us out,” said Alex, 27. “As soon as we moved in we put up notices that said we were here, and a mobile number for a contact in the camp so if someone had an issue they could talk to us.”

“It was good at the police place because we reached an agreement for a few months with the owners – who ironically were the Caravan Club – and were able to stay without worrying we would be thrown out.