NEW YORK—Steve Bevington has a knack for saying lofty statements in such an understated way that it takes a moment to fully comprehend them.
“No one in India needs to be homeless and no one needs to be in a slum.”
Bevington has the humility of someone whose perspective arises from the core. And he has the quiet conviction of someone who turns the most ambitious goals into reality.
He is the founder and managing director of Community Housing Ltd. (CHL), an Australian-based, not-for-profit charity with $387.4 million in total assets (2015) and a broad vision: “a world without housing poverty.”
Bevington’s own experience of homelessness runs deep and provides a steady compass by which he makes decisions.
He left his parents’ home in the English countryside, where there were no jobs, and moved to London. Beginning in the 1970s, when housing was scarce in London, he spent the better part of a decade living in squatter housing and about a year sleeping on the streets.
He spoke of stuffing his clothes with newspaper to keep warm and seeking the warm updraft of the London underground train system. And he spoke of what unstable housing does to a person.
“If you don’t have a place to be, then you can’t really engage in the fundamentals which keep body and soul together,” he said. “And the majority of the population do not understand how not having a base can totally sabotage your capacity to plan.”
His altruistic bent started early, as did his career in housing the poor.
“I got very zealous. … There were a lot of families on the streets—husband, wife, and kids—and I used to break into the places for the families.” The places were in derelict public housing that had been abandoned due to funding cuts.
Bevington ended up in the London borough of Camden. There, he and a group of about 40 young people took over some abandoned properties and formed a legal cooperative—which still exists today.
They spent a bit of money, collected rent, and kept the houses in serviceable condition. “But they were not of the habitable standard most people would expect,” said Bevington. He lived there for eight years.
In 1984 at age 29, despite his lack of professional experience, he was hired to head the housing authority for Camden London Borough Council and took on a huge staff of 1,200, along with 37,800 houses and 8,000 housing association properties.
