Reader, I spent this week doing something I haven’t done in a while: I took a vacation.
Well, sort of. I spent my holiday getting a haircut, reading a book, catching up with friends, baking a birthday cake* — all the sorts of things that, in the Before Times, I probably would have considered to be a pretty unextraordinary use of my time off. But not this year. With the pandemic ever-present and with travel being unpredictable, I decided that 2020 would an ideal year for a staycation. And while I haven’t been able to lie on a beach or explore a new city, I have had the chance to watch my little patch of North London (which I moved into just as the pandemic was starting) reawaken after months of enforced hibernation. It’s been pretty glorious.
Wherever 2020 takes you — or keeps you — this summer, I hope it’s similarly sweet (and safe).
* If you’re reading this, happy birthday Steve!
What I’ve written
When Britain went into lockdown in late March, it had to confront an urgent question: How do stay-at-home orders apply to those without a home?
The answer the country came up with was a seemingly simple one: bring everyone in. Within days, the British government, local authorities, and homeless charities collaborated to provide thousands of unsheltered people with their own private rooms. It was a Herculean effort, resulting in the housing of nearly 15,000 people in England alone, including more than 90 percent of the country’s street homeless population. A task the government had given itself years to solve was achieved in a matter of days.
For all the existing vulnerabilities the coronavirus has exposed, it has also revealed how easily seemingly intractable problems can be fixed—with enough political will. “It took a terrible thing to make us sort this situation out,” Dame Louise Casey, who has been leading the British government’s efforts to house rough sleepers during the pandemic, told me in a recent interview. But the pandemic hasn’t solved Britain’s homelessness crisis outright. As the country looks forward to how it can address this problem in the longterm, I posit that the question is no longer how Britain’s homelessness crisis can be resolved, but whether the country’s leaders will still be willing to expend the resources and political capital necessary to do so once the pandemic has passed. You can read more here.
I chatted about the above piece (as well my recent reporting on the future of cities and Europe’s lost summer) in Wednesday’s episode of The Bunker podcast. Tune in if you fancy it!👇
What I’ve read
I’ve been guilty taking my American passport for granted. This important read by my colleague Prashant Rao explains how Americans are confronting the arbitrariness that travel and immigration are built on:
“An American passport, until recently, could bring you anywhere with minimal need to worry about visas and border checks. But this is the world of immigration that Americans must now familiarize themselves with. Before the pandemic, more than 100 countries were willing to admit Americans; now, by one count, fewer than three dozen countries want you. What you have done matters little; instead, your movements are limited by factors outside of your control, and your passport locks doors rather than opening them.”
This powerful excerpt of Seyward Darby’s forthcoming book Sisters in Hate about the American women on the frontlines of white nationalism:
“People don’t leave the hate movement because a veil lifts ... The truth is more disappointing. They leave because it makes sense for them, because the value hate once gave them has diminished or evaporated.”
This mind bender of an essay by Graeme Wood on visiting Disney Land during the pandemic:
“I should admit that a Disney vacation, even in pre-coronavirus conditions, sounds to me like the most elaborate way to have a miserable time yet invented by humankind. … I do not dislike Disney films, and I am especially fond of Pixar and the Muppets. But my desire to meet Mickey Mouse evaporated around the age of 8, when I asked my mother about this wonderful place called Disney World and she said, in effect, that she loved me very much, but that she would rather die of dysentery than take me to Florida to have her pocket picked by anthropomorphic vermin. I don’t think I asked again. The chance of being struck dead by a mysterious disease has not sweetened the appeal of the park.”
What I’m thinking about
As I find myself having more opportunities to spend time indoors, I’ve been thinking about the importance of ventilation (and why, six months into a respiratory pandemic, we really need to talk about it).
Also, on a lighter note, I’ve been thinking about this incredible thread by the Metro’s social team, which attempted to (theoretically) spend the entirety of Jeff Bezos’s $189.3 billion net worth. Not an easy task, as it turns out.
Until next time,
Yasmeen
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