More Than a Roof Over Our Heads: housing for all

Please check ticket info for this event below, incl. information about access.

We know there’s a housing crisis in the UK, and we know things are bad. What realities hide behind the headlines, and how do we work toward a world where everyone has a safe home?

Through polemic, a novel, and local organising, our three panelists explore the nature of today’s housing crisis, bringing a damning picture to light.

Poet Holly Pester is the author of the novel The Lodgers. Nick Bano is a lawyer and the author of Against Landlords. They are joined by Aditi Jehangir, National Chair of Living Rent, to discuss the state of our homes, and their very real visions of how things could be.

The event will be chaired by JJ Fadaka and is organised in partnership with RS21. Scotland.

Our speakers:

Holly Pester is a poet, novelist and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex. She has worked in sound art and performance, with original dramatic work on BBC Radio 4, and collaborations with Women's Art Library and Wellcome Collection. Her poetry has been published extensively, appearing in Poetry Review, the White Review, Poetry London and Believer Magazine. Her fiction has been published in Granta and anthologised in Protest (Comma Press, 2018). Comic Timing, her Forward Prize shortlisted first full collection of poetry, was published by Granta, 2021. The Lodgers is her debut novel.

Nick Bano is a lawyer and author. He is recognised as a leading barrister in the field of housing and homelessness rights. His book Against Landlords: How to solve the housing crisis, which applies a Marxist analysis to the question of housing, was published by Verso in 2024.

Aditi Jehangir is the National Chair of Living Rent, Scotland’s tenant and community union. She has been a member of the union for five years and has had a variety of roles within the union. Living Rent is a democratic organisation run by and for our members. We organise and represent our members in the private and social rented sector. We fight for safe, secure and affordable housing for everyone. We believe in building power from the ground up, organising on the neighbourhood level upwards through community power. We are not affiliated to any political party, but recognise the importance of influencing parties and politicians and holding them to account. As a tenant’s union, we have won thousands of pounds back for our members through member defence, stopped illegal evictions and won policy changes such as better protections for tenants, eviction bans during the lockdown period and the rent freeze.

*Please note that masks will be required at this event (as with all Lighthouse events).

*Accessibility: All events will be professionally filmed & livestreamed. The Roxy is wheelchair accessible (including toilets) and we'll have provisions for neurodivergent guests including stims, quiet space and colour-coded lanyards.

*Events are £6 or free -we completely understand paying for one or two events and then getting free spots for others. The Radical Book Fair is entirely bookshop run and ticket sales are vital to keeping the fair sustainable and paying all our speakers so all support is heartily welcome!

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