When you’re little, it’s easy to assume every singer or actor we see on TV is a millionaire, living in fancy houses in some exciting, parallel world. So when news emerged recently that S Club 7’s Hannah Spearritt had found herself homeless over Christmas it was hard to comprehend.
In a recent interview with The Sun, the singer and actor – who was in the band from 1998 to 2003 before acting in ITV drama Primeval and West End shows – revealed she had to sleep in a friend’s office with her partner and their two young children, after their landlord sold up and gave them two months to leave their home. But then their move out date was brought forward and they found themselves with two days to find somewhere else.
‘Our landlord needed the money and the property sold so fast,’ said Hannah, 41, of their home in South West London. ‘We ended up with under two days to leave. What screwed us is we didn’t have time to find another place.
They turned down the option of short-term rentals because of the 'crazy, extortionate' amount being asked for up front.
‘We had somewhere over Christmas but ran out of time before we could move in. It was just a couple of weeks.’
With nowhere to go they stayed in a friend’s office. ‘We just used it as our living room,’ she said. ‘We could work in there and the kids played. It was extra space. The kids’ beds were there and we had the crayons out. The climbing frame was up; it was fun for them.
‘It was stressful but you deal with it, don’t you? Especially with the kids. Whatever doesn’t break you, as they say.’
In the last six months, the singer said she has lived in multiple temporary houses.
‘People think we must all be millionaires but sadly it’s just not true. It was what it was and we enjoyed ourselves at the time,’ she said, of being in the band.
S Club 7 was one of the biggest British pop groups of the early Noughties, but in recent years former bandmate Paul Cattermole sold his Brit award on eBay. And according to The Sun, Hannah was paid £150,000 a year during her time in the band, despite it reportedly generating £50million.
It sounds like a pittance for a chart-topping pop star, but is still a salary the majority of the population could only dream of. So the fact Hannah has found herself homeless says a lot about the state of our housing system today.
We live in one of the richest nations in the world, yet many in this country are struggling for housing, locked out of an unattainable housing market and with astronomical rents to pay. With house prices and private rents reaching record highs while wages stagnate, more people are ending up in poverty, while others face eviction, homelessness and unsafe living conditions.
If even former pop stars are feeling the country’s chronic housing crisis bite, it shows how deeply the problem runs. There simply aren’t enough affordable homes to go around. The cost of living crisisonly intensifies the issue, so we need to fix the system fast, so everyone has safe, secure accommodation.