Mr Skelly

“If you keep carrying old bricks, you’ll keep building the same house.” Wise words from Christian Watson’s bony creation, Mr Skelly, who has connected with millions of people around the world with his reassuring, gently optimistic observations on life. Watson’s cover art speaks to the content within this week’s issue as we put a special focus on housing in the UK, and how homes became political. With the government’s housebuilding target looking shaky and the allocation of land on an unsteady footing, we explore ways to prop up construction efforts so that enough houses can be built to meet current need. And we meet the communities laying the foundations of a more affordable future by building for themselves.

Also inside

• Why is it that credit is cheap for the people who need it least and extortionate for those who need it most? The Fair Banking for All Campaign hopes to change that
• Comedian Ahir Shah was robbed of a family heirloom recently. He has a story to tell the thief
• It’s 60 years since Cathy Come Home changed public perceptions around homelessness. It felt like a national reckoning at the time, but has anything actually changed?
• Cover artist Christian Watson explains how gratitude got him through tough times and informed his new book
• Funeral poverty is a growing problem in this country. So what happens when you can’t afford to die?
• PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk’s moment of realisation came when she rescued a tiny pig. Before long she was disrupting the fur industry and befriending the McCartneys
• James Nelson-Joyce is back for a new season of This City Is Ours. He’s also in the running to be the next Bond
• How did a nation ignore the mass murder of disabled people under the Nazis? Mat Fraser explains the thinking behind his new documentary The Experiment
• Long after Mark E Smith’s death, The Fall have a new album!
• And Cambridge vendor Chris loves his pitch because it’s so photogenic

And much more

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