The invisible city: how a homeless man built a life underground

March 5, 2020 8:58 AM

How Dominic van Allen built himself a comfortable underground residence hidden within Hampstead Heath near central metropolitan London, and lived there undetected for years. And how everything went wrong. (Guardian Long Read)
posted by beagle (26 comments total)

You could (and I did) pay £700 p.m. for worse in most of central London.

Counter-terrorism command: “Any wildlife killed?”

Van Allen: “No … We’re not Australians …

lol

More seriously, pretty sure the only thing stopping thousands of precariously renting or couchsurfing Londoners from doing this is a lack of construction skills. Visible street homelessness has increased massively over the last few years - e.g. there used to be a couple of older guys asking for change in London Bridge during morning / evening rush hour, now there's at least a dozen regulars, half of whom are young and don't look like they've been street homeless for long. And as the article points out, visible street homelessness is the tip of the iceberg.

Between Brexit, coronavirus, and the natural tendencies of an unfettered Tory government, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
posted by inire at 9:26 AM on March 5, 2020 [15 favorites]

I have just read this to the end.
I hope he gets a retrial with his new lawyer.
I could write more, but what's the point?
posted by lungtaworld at 9:58 AM on March 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Screw the law. He should have been allowed to keep his bunker - or given housing. Housing should be a human right.
posted by jb at 11:37 AM on March 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

Unimpressed by an officer’s drawing of a site he had colonised and modified with care (“This is a terrible sketch,” he told police), Van Allen borrowed a pencil and made improvements.

I like this guy.
posted by chavenet at 11:52 AM on March 5, 2020 [26 favorites]

Is there anyone here who can nominate him for the Pritzker next year?
posted by TedW at 11:58 AM on March 5, 2020 [11 favorites]

This is even better than the Toronto mystery tunnel.
posted by jacquilynne at 12:25 PM on March 5, 2020

I know I've seen worse spaces in London Rental Opportunity of the Week.
posted by betweenthebars at 12:28 PM on March 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

Jesus wept, 5 years.
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:42 PM on March 5, 2020 [9 favorites]

A good place to plug the excellent 2018 film Leave No Trace, based on a real-life case in Oregon.
posted by Beardman at 1:44 PM on March 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm surprised he didn't get a more severe sentence (i.e., with hard labour or similar), ostensibly on a pretext of Terrorism or Drugs or Gross Moral Turpitude or some other convenient catch-all, but in practice to deter others who might try something similar.
posted by acb at 1:51 PM on March 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Jesus wept, 5 years

That's the minimum tariff for firearms offences.

I'm surprised he didn't get a more severe sentence (i.e., with hard labour or similar)

Hard labour's not been a thing in England for over 70 years.
posted by biffa at 2:06 PM on March 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

I find it hard to believe he had anything to do with the gun, having spent so long trying not to attract attention to himself. The real criminals are the ones inviting bids in excess of £9M for a house.
posted by hrpomrx at 2:13 PM on March 5, 2020 [11 favorites]

This brings back so many memories. I had a secret camp on the edge of a park like area, there was a bench not 20ft away to sit and look over the wild beauty and right up the path was a place where people had wedding receptions and such. Right behind this row of bushes up against a high retaining wall was just enough room to stretch out and sleep. I keep thinking that I left a beaded necklace made by a friend that had my street-name spelled out in little square letter blocks hanging on one of the branches. One of these days I'll go back and see if it's still there. That was the one nobody knew about.

The other I inherited after tweaker D moved on along. It was at the beginning of a freeway up at the top of a steep bank by a bridge. If you walked past the end of the fence and hopped over the guardrail and tracked back... there was a giant evergreen pine tree up next to the bridge. Crawl under that tree and it was like being a little kid playing in the hedge again. Plenty of space, covered in needles (no fires here please) and enough room to stand up in places. No reason for the road crews who cleared brush and planted things to think about crawling under that tree. You couldn't be seen, the coverage was enough to keep the rain off and the wind from blowing through too much. A really good spot. Wonder who's camping there now.

Cool post.
posted by zengargoyle at 2:32 PM on March 5, 2020 [29 favorites]

There was a guy in Chicago who built a home for himself and a couple of others beneath a lift bridge on Lake Shore Drive. He even had electricity, VCR, 20 inch TV and a game console. He only got caught when one of his "neighbors" ratted him out after they were busted for something else.
posted by srboisvert at 3:07 PM on March 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

I've honestly thought of doing the same things, both in times when I was living out of a car, and in more privileged times. I still pass certain areas and wonder what kind of hidden accommodations could be built in.
posted by wildblueyonder at 3:13 PM on March 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Here's a photograph of the entrance to the bunker. Very Rogue Male.
posted by verstegan at 3:37 PM on March 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

The real criminals are the ones inviting bids in excess of £9M for a house.

Well it's about 50-50 that they're Russian oligarchs so you are probably correct.
posted by biffa at 3:46 PM on March 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Jesus wept, 5 years.

Guns are just not ok over here. And there's no legitimate reason to have one on Hampstead Heath.

The article implies the conviction may be unsafe, and jailing an innocent person is worse than letting a guilty person go free, but I think the decision to prosecute itself is probably justifiable. The sentencing guidelines broadly reflect public sentiment about guns.
posted by plonkee at 3:53 PM on March 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Wow. I used to be chief reporter on the local paper mentioned in the story. On a Thursday afternoon, after we’d gone to press, we’d all get turfed out of the office to go out on our patch, supposedly looking for stories. Sometimes I’d just go for a nice walk on the Heath. If I’d’ve tripped over something like this while pretending to be out looking for stories, I’d have thought all my Christmases had come at once.

Also: That level of ingenuity, problem solving, project planning and determination, if he’d been born into different circumstances, would have made him the kind of person who could buy a £9m house on the edge of the Heath.
posted by penguin pie at 3:57 PM on March 5, 2020 [11 favorites]

That is so not a gun. It's PVC and 43mm. That's HUGE for any sort of ammunition, unsuitable for a pipe-bomb. That's just a water-tight stash or something. They'd have to be trying for a Captain Kirk vs Gorn sort of thing that's most likely going to blow up in their face.
posted by zengargoyle at 5:38 PM on March 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

“I fought it for years and then I threw in the towel. Said to myself: ‘Fuck it, I’m going camping.’”

I spent some years homeless in the early 2000s, but have a decent job now - unfortunately I live in the Portland area and rents are jacked up so high and we aren’t even close to what they’re dealing with in SF or LA or London. I could lose my place quickly and wind up in a tent by the fence covered in tarps. I have had that thought quoted above many times over the past several months. We are going to have to do something about letting folks live rough and normalizing it. One way or another I’d say this is gonna have to get fixed, either humanely or the guillotines will come out. The amount of rage this inspires is not something a society ought to try to ignore or stifle. This is terrible.
posted by cybrcamper at 6:03 PM on March 5, 2020 [14 favorites]

Me and my Boy Scout troop once slept within 50 yards of Thomas Johnson's underground bunker on Nantucket. He managed to go about 18 years without paying rent and was an (anti) hero of my teenage imagination.
posted by head full of air at 6:35 PM on March 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Okay so it's not Wimbledon Common, but I was disappointed at the complete lack of any Wombles references.
posted by meehawl at 7:32 PM on March 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

> Okay so it's not Wimbledon Common, but I was disappointed at the complete lack of any Wombles yt references.

"He was aware that what he considered “Womble-ing” would be called vandalism by others, and he accepted the possibility of a fine, maybe a minor charge, as the price of stable shelter."

The Grauniad is on the case!
posted by madajb at 7:41 PM on March 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

The article was interesting to read! There's actually an RV camp, totally legal, a little bit further to the norh inside the park, next to the wooden house that was demolished.

I did find the old setup between the 9M home aristo villains and the disenfranchised victims a little bit too easy on "the middle", but I guess it's more of a human story than anything else.
posted by haemanu at 8:13 PM on March 5, 2020

Absolutely amazing. Resourceful doesn't even come close to it. The pipe gun doesn't quite fit with this write-up's characterisation, but then who knows what we're not being told. I feel like this guy would do well in a K-Class End Of The World Scenario.

I'm reminded of my time playing DayZ, wherein you had to find a secluded place and stash your stuff in hidden containers if you wanted to not be robbed. Except while I was immersed in my post-apocalyptic escapist fantasy, this guy and countless others were living it every day. Gives me pause.
posted by Acey at 6:05 AM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]