On 11th April, homeless families and families living in overcrowded housing used their school holiday to raise the alarm on the housing emergency and the record-breaking homelessness statistics which include 142,490 homeless kids in England.
We gathered in St John’s Gardens before marching to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities where we tried to deliver an eviction notice to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities for presiding over the biggest homeless crisis in the country’s history. The eviction notice warns that in order to avoid eviction, Michael Gove and his government must commit to: “A council housing revolution of high-quality, safe, secure, family-sized 3, 4, 5 bed council homes that our communities need and deserve.”
There were 300 of us making this our biggest ever protest and the biggest protest of homeless families that London has seen in at least a decade.
Unfortunately, at the staff entrance to the building, they shut the automatic door so that we could not deliver our eviction notice. Locked outside the building, we made lots of noise and sang chants with our demands – “How many rooms do we need to thrive? 3-4-5! 3-4-5!” and “Michael Gove, hear us say, homelessness must end today”. HASL children demolished a squalid temporary accommodation pinata in front of the entrance to remind the Department for Housing and Michael Gove that temporary accommodation should not exist because we should all have the high-quality, safe, secure council homes we need and deserve!
We marched around the building to another entrance of the Department for Housing and attempted to deliver our eviction notice again but we were told this would not be possible because it’s a security threat as it has not been scanned and our letter was too big to fit in the scanner. HASL children still had plenty of strength and energy left to demolish our housing waiting list pinata. Staff came to the windows to watch us from the building, so we’re sure they saw our clear messages on our brightly coloured banners: We need 3, 4, 5 bed council homes – too long in temporary – a home close to school – 142,490 homeless kids
It was a really powerful, strong and determined protest. Most of our members are from south London, but we had families travelling from across London to join us (because they have been housed in temporary accommodation in other parts of London or because their friends had invited them to join our protest) and our sister groups Haringey Housing Action Group and English for Action also joined us.
Afterwards, we went to Vauxhall where over 100 of us had tea, juice and cake together to celebrate our group’s 11th birthday.
There has been some amazing press coverage of our protest.
HASL has seen how life-changing it has been for families when they have finally been able to move into secure, good quality council housing in their communities. Yet, unfortunately, family-sized council homes are not being delivered. Analysis by London Tenants Federation of data on the delivery of one, two, three and four-plus low-cost bedroom-sized homes from 2012 to 2022 on the Greater London Authority’s residential completions dashboard showed that only 2,465 four-bedroom plus homes were delivered from 2012-22 compared to a total of 21,997 (61 per cent) one and two-bed low-cost rented homes.
Meanwhile, overcrowding in social housing is at record levels with families trapped in 1 and 2 bed social homes unable to move into bigger homes. These 1 and 2 bed social homes would be freed up if overcrowded families were able to move into larger homes showing how the focus on building new 1 and 2 bed homes and ignoring 3, 4, 5 bed needs is misplaced.
Analysis in 2021 by Home Connections, a not-for-profit organisation which provides a platform that advertises council homes for those on council waiting lists stated: “We need a higher number of properties with three or more bedrooms, appropriate for larger families waiting for a social home”.
Elizabeth Wyatt, a member of HASL said:
“This devastating housing emergency is ruining the lives of over 140,000 children in England. And this is a political choice that has been made by this government for the last 14 years and it is absolutely unforgivable. But this can be turned around, it’s really that simple, we can solve the homeless crisis instantly with investment and expansion of high-quality, safe, secure, family-sized council homes that our communities need and deserve. After decades of neglect of council housing, the situation has got so dire that urgent, radical action is needed.”
This year, we celebrated our 10th birthday with over 300 of our members! This is an incredible achievement for a member-run organisation of homeless families and individuals and others struggling with housing problems. But this year has been the hardest we have ever faced in terms of the housing crisis.
The housing emergency has reached terrifying levels we couldn’t imagine and we’re seeing problems that we’ve never encountered before which are further fuelling the homelessness crisis. The new problems we are seeing have included:
Hotels are not housing! It is becoming standard practice for families to be given hotels as emergency accommodation with councils regularly breaking the 6 week limit. But even the 6 week limit is too generous. No one should be housed without basic cooking facilities.
We’re regularly seeing families in self-contained temporary accommodation get eviction notices from the private landlord who wants the property back. This means families who are already homeless face homelessness yet again!
The legal aid crisis means we can’t find legal aid housing lawyers to take on new cases – including urgent eviction cases. We’re spending lots of our time at the moment just contacting legal aid lawyers to try to find a lawyer with capacity.
There’s been a huge increase in homeless families being forced out of London, far away from their lives and communities. Whilst this has been a political choice for some councils like Waltham Forest over the last decade, now more councils are sending families to places we’ve never heard of.
In response to soaring homelessness, local councils are returning to aggressive gatekeeping tactics and making harsher decisions against vulnerable homeless people.
Many of our members are also stuck on hospital waiting lists unable to get the medical care that they need whilst at the same time being denied the disability benefits to meet their basic needs.
Despite all of this, our members have been tirelessly supporting each other, campaigning and fighting together for the high-quality council homes we all need and deserve!
This year, our group meetings regularly had well over 100 people attending, with many of our members facing urgent housing problems. For the first half of the year our extremely dedicated organising team put lots of our energies into learning to facilitate such large meetings and by the second half of the year our large meetings were running pretty smoothly. It was vital that we put so much energy into learning to adapt and facilitate these huge meetings as our group meetings are the heart of HASL where we provide collective support and plan housing action together.
As well as running our huge group meetings twice a month we also helped to run 2 other monthly housing support meetings with our friends English for Action and Parents and Communities Together. We organised a protest of over 50 HASL members outside the Royal Courts of Justice showing our solidarity for an important homeless case taken by a single mother who was forced out of London. At short notice, we quickly mobilised to respond to Lambeth council’s housing waiting list consultation to fight for better rights for homeless households and families in overcrowded housing. We led a successful campaign to demand that a housing association stop their racist eviction of one of our members. We have worked with other grassroots groups and organisations sharing information on housing rights and our experiences of organising. We have helped our members to understand and enforce their housing and homeless rights which has stopped evictions and helped members facing unlawful gatekeeping to get temporary accommodation. With our support 23 HASL members and their families have been able to move from temporary accommodation and other poor housing conditions into permanent social housing.
Every day across south London (and sometimes beyond!) we are supporting people to understand and enforce their housing rights, we let people know that they are not alone, and we campaign for the high-quality council homes we all need and deserve.
A big thank you to all our HASL members and supporters for your continued support. Our group is run by our members and the group would not function without everyone’s participation. Thank you to everyone who has helped in any way – participating in our group meetings, helping with translation/interpretation, telling friends about the group, liking our social media posts, joining protests, cooking us delicious food, and so much more! We’ve also loved working together with our friends Public Interest Law Centre, English for Action, Z2K (for their excellent and expert disability benefits advice), Parents and Communities Together (PACT), Lambeth Mutual Aid, and many other groups and new friends we’ve made over the year.
We hope everyone can have a good rest over the winter holidays and we’re looking forward to returning with even more energy, strength and solidarity in the new year!
Here are some of our 2023 highlights.
Protesting for homeless rights and council housing
Back in July, a homeless single mother – who had been forced to take a property over 100 miles away – was taking her case against Waltham Forest council to the Court of Appeal with the help of Hackney Community Law Centre. On the morning of this important court case over 50 HASL members gathered outside the court to show their support for the family and for homeless rights for everyone. We held banners and placards with our slogans: “A Home Close to School”, “No More Long Journeys to School”, “Waltham Forest – Stop Forcing Homeless Families Out of London”! It was an incredible show of support for homeless rights. We spoke with journalists from the Guardian, the BBC, and local Waltham Forest press. You can see some press coverage here and here.
Disappointingly the decision by the Court of Appeal said it is OK for homeless single mums and their kids to be torn from their communities and sent over 100 miles away. But whatever the law says – we know that the very least every child should have is a Home Close to School! No one should be forced out of their community. We will keep on campaigning and fighting for the high quality council homes our communities need and deserve!
July was a busy month for protesting – HASL had also been on the streets the week before with Aylesbury estate tenants and other local residents for a march from Elephant and Castle down the Walworth Road to the Aylesbury Estate – standing strong against numerous downpours of rain! This protest was part of Housing Rebellion’s National Day of Action. Our message to Southwark council was: Our council housing is precious and there is huge need for more council homes – there is no excuse for demolishing the Aylesbury!
Some nice photos here and here videos here and here Press coverage of the protest featuring a HASL member here
Over 100 responses to Lambeth council’s housing waiting list consultation
At short notice, HASL organised a huge response to Lambeth council’s out of the blue housing waiting list consultation. As well as being out of the blue, the time frame given by the council was just over 1 month. After a legal challenge by PILC, this deadline has now been extended to 19th January 2024. Despite these challenges, we were able to engage with our members and prepare a collective response with families in temporary accommodation and severely overcrowded housing. Over 100 Lambeth residents used our template answers to call on the council to make the housing waiting list rules fairer, especially for those at the worst end of the housing crisis. Please do keep on using and sharing our template answers.
HASL also wrote up a detailed response to the housing waiting list consultation based on our years of experience of the current policy and all the problems we have faced. You can read this detailed response on our website here.
For a decade, HASL members in temporary accommodation have been campaigning against being trapped ‘Too Long in Temporary’. The fact that Lambeth council have now launched a consultation with one of the key proposals focussed on helping families in temporary accommodation to finally access social housing, is definitely a victory we can claim!
HASL’s 10th Birthday
We celebrated our 10th birthday in April with our biggest ever social event attended by over 300 HASL members! Thanks to the amazing organising skills of our members we had delicious healthy food for everyone, lots of birthday cake, kids activities, face painting, film making, henna, and of course our temporary accommodation pinata! It was a really special event celebrating with old and new HASL members. There are some photos here.
Our birthday celebration was followed by our next big social event in August – our summer picnic which was attended by 200 people and which also reached record breaking numbers: 90 slices of pizza, 10kg of injera, 100+ empanadas, 7 cakes (with one weighing 5kg!), 6 hours of non-stop face painting, 42 cupcakes for decorating, and 1 housing waiting list account fixed!
We stopped a racist eviction and won permanent social housing!
At the start of the year our member was facing a racist eviction by Optivo/Southern housing. After our campaign and legal action, our member finally moved into a beautiful permanent social home in his local community this summer! You can read more in our blog post here. Thank you to everyone who supported our campaign which saw almost 300 email letters sent to Optivo’s/Southern CEO!
Some of our members’ victories
All throughout the year we have been supporting members to learn and enforce their housing and homeless rights and providing each other with vital emotional and moral support. We have buddied our members at their homeless assessments, helped them to find good lawyers to challenge terrible homeless decisions, helped our members to challenge unsuitable temporary accommodation, and helped them get their correct position on the housing waiting list. We have attended court 2 times with our members facing eviction to provide them with moral support through the stressful eviction process – and we also gave practical support to 4 other people going to court facing eviction. In 4 of the cases, the eviction was stopped and the two other cases are still continuing. We have also been helping members complete the defence forms within the strict 14 day deadline for Sectoin 21 evictions (when a lawyer cannot be found quick enough). One of these has already resulted in the landlord withdrawing the possession claim!
With our support 23 HASL members and families have been able to move from temporary accommodation and other poor housing conditions into permanent social housing. We’re so happy for our members who have been able to move into secure social housing but we know the hardship and difficulties they suffered before they were finally able to get their new homes. In HASL, we know how life-changing it is to have a permanent home in our local community and each victory inspires us to keep on fighting for the high-quality, safe, secure, family-sized council housing we all need and deserve.
Fighting for ‘A Home Close to School’ has been a long running HASL campaign making sure that homeless families are given temporary accommodation in their local area. Patricia and her family were housed by Lambeth council in temporary accommodation outside of London in Basildon. The long commute meant that Patricia lost her job in Lambeth and her children faced hours each day travelling to school whilst one of her son’s was trying to study for his GCSEs. With the help of a housing lawyer and by speaking out to the press about her case, including international media, Lambeth council suddenly found the family temporary accommodation back in Lambeth. This was a huge relief for the family, especially for her son whose GCSE exams where about to start.
A new member came to our group when her homeless duty had been ended for failing to accept a private rented property in Stoke on Trent. With just one day before the Appeal deadline, we helped her to get housing lawyers to take her Appeal. After the Appeal was lodged in the court, the council withdrew their decision and her and her toddler have been re-housed in suitable temporary accommodation here in London.
A HASL member who had spent over a decade in temporary accommodation recently moved into a 3 bed social housing home came to the group to share her news and told us:
“It’s a beautiful home. I waited 11 years in temporary accommodation being evicted 6 times. I never imagined I would get such a beautiful home in this country. I didn’t have anyone to support me apart from this group. I don’t have any family here. The group was my family. When it was Christmas, I had to go to court and they came to court with me and supported me when I had no one else.”
Fighting for our rights to disability benefits: HASL 5 – DWP 0
Homelessness and other terrible housing conditions and long NHS waiting lists, along with other factors means that many of our members are experiencing long-term ill health and struggling with disabilities. We’ve been supporting our members to access the disability benefits that they need but are regularly refused by the DWP.
With the help of the amazing Z2K disability benefits experts, 5 of our members have been successful at the Disability Tribunal and won the disability benefits they need. The DWP make claiming disability benefits unnecessarily cruel and difficult and it has often taken over 1 year before our members received the benefits they should have been entitled to all along.
The fight for disability benefits can also be an important step in getting the main homeless duty and long-term temporary accommodation. Single people face the cruel prioirty need test which lets councils say people are helthy enough to live on the streets. Once a member obtains disability benefits, it makes it harder for the council to refuse a person homeless assistance. One of our members has got a full homeless duty this year after we helped her to get the disability element of Universal Credit.
Outreach and workshops
Throughout the year, we have been busy meeting up and making links with other community groups and social justice organisations and campaigners so that we can learn from each other and find ways to work together.
Back in March, Public Interest Law Centre helped to co-ordinate a meeting at Sylvia’s Corner of grassroots homeless groups including us, Focus E15, Streets Kitchen, and Museum of Homelessness to reflect on our current struggles and look at the issues we face in the future. Together, we had decades of experience of grassroots housing organising to share with each other!
We ran a workshop reflecting on our 10 years of organising mutual support and collective action on homelessness and housing at the incredible Fight4Aylesbury council home exhibition in May. We were invited to speak on a panel about homelessness at the Junior HLPA event for people interested in becoming legal aid lawyers alongside the brilliant Project 17. We were really excited to visit our friends Magpie Project out in East London where we met their Reach campaign team and shared our experiences of campaigning together and tried to answer their really thoughtful questions. We visited east London again to go to the UCL East campus where we spoke with students on a great panel which included our friends Public Interest Law Centre and London Tenants Federation where we discussed organising on housing in London and the strengths and limitations we face. All of the events had really engaged audiences and interesting questions which is a really promising sign for the London housing movement.
In October, along with our friends Lambeth Mutual Aid we helped to organise the London premiere of A Bedroom for Everyone – a short animation film looking at the UK’s housing movement which features HASL!
It was great to join the first London Radical Bookfair since 2019. HASL had a very colourful stall with HASL stickers, badges, fridge magnets, posters, and pamphlets. We had lots of good engagement from people speaking about the housing crisis and about our group.
Some of our other activities
In January, we joined the inspiring nurses picket outside King’s College hospital. The NHS is very close to HASL’s heart. Members of our group who are living in temporary accommodation, overcrowded and other poor housing also work in the NHS as cleaners, nurses and healthcare assistants. Many of our members are also patients, some are struggling to access the high-quality care they need and are stuck on long waiting lists. We need high quality council housing and high quality health care for everyone!
We started 2023 strongly, running two training sessions with our members covering homeless rights and how to effectively run our support groups. Later in the year, we ran another homeless rights training in Spanish. And we had our fourth training learning housing rights through looking at case studies together. We’ve also started running monthly work sessions where we can work on tasks together to build our skills and learn new ones.
We have been building a campaign with our sister group Haringey Housing Action Group against private sector discharge which is where homeless families have their homeless duty ended with private sector housing. When this happens, families lose their homeless rights (such as the ability to request a suitability review) and usually their chance to bid for social housing on the housing waiting list. And then after a short period of time, they face eviction and end up back at the housing office. HASL and HHAG have had meetings discussing our direct experiences and also tactics of how to fight it and are currently working on Freedom of Information request research to help build our campaign.
One of our members also organised HASL’s first ever seaside trip for our HASL organisers and family members with over 50 of us heading to the coast by coach for a wonderful day trip.
Our long read article about our successful campaign with families in some of Southwark’s most overcrowded housing was published in Justice Gap.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: After Public Interest Law Centre threatened legal action, Lambeth council have now agreed to extend the consultation deadline – for this consultation as well as 2 other housing consultations – to 19th January 2024. Please do keep using and sharing our template answers for the housing waiting list consultation here.
At short notice, HASL organised a huge response to Lambeth council’s out of the blue housing waiting list consultation. As well as being out of the blue, the time frame given by the council was just over 1 month. Despite these challenges, we were able to engage with our members and prepare a collective response with families in temporary accommodation and severely overcrowded housing. Over 100 Lambeth residents used our template answers to call on the council to make the housing waiting list rules fairer, especially for those at the worst end of the housing crisis. A big thank you to everyone who used and shared our template answers.
HASL also wrote up a detailed response to the housing waiting list consultation based on our years of experience of the current policy and all the problems we have faced. You can read this here. Apologies for any typos it contains, we were very rushed and tired by this point!
For a decade, HASL members in temporary accommodation have been campaigning against being trapped ‘Too Long in Temporary’ – the fact that Lambeth council have launched a consultation with one of the key proposals focussed on helping families in temporary accommodation to finally access social housing is definitely a victory we can claim!
We’ll be keeping a close eye on the next steps of this consultation and what Lambeth council are up to and we will keep everyone updated.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: After Public Interest Law Centre threatened legal action, Lambeth council have now agreed to extend the consultation deadline – for this consultation as well as 2 other housing consultations – to 19th January 2024. Please do keep using and sharing our template answers for the housing waiting list consultation here.
🚨Do you live in Lambeth or have another connection with Lambeth?
📝Lambeth council are running a consultation/survey to get our views on new rules for the social housing waiting list. This is a vital opportunity to make the waiting list rules better and fairer for everyone – especially those in the worst housing.
🏚️Under the current rules, homeless families have been trapped in temporary accommodation for years and even decades because they are stuck at the bottom of the housing waiting list. Under the new rules being proposed, homeless households will finally be closer to getting the social housing they need. This is a long overdue step from the council – for a decade, Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth members in temporary accommodation have been campaigning against being trapped ‘Too Long in Temporary’.
💬Over 50 HASL members living in temporary accommodation and severely overcrowded housing have collectively written our answers to the council’s housing waiting list consultation.
✊If you are a Lambeth resident (or have any other connection to Lambeth such as working in the borough, or having family members in the borough), please show your support by using our online form to send HASL’s answers directly to Lambeth council (you can edit our answers if you wish but we hope you agree with what we have written!)
✍️use this link here to send our template answers to Lambeth council:https://t.ly/5bX8b
🗣️Please share with your friends, family and neighbours. The more people who use our answers, the bigger the impact we will have!
The deadline for submitting responses to the consultation isFriday 19th January 2024.
In our answers we have argued:
✨Homeless households should get band B, they have been trapped in temporary accommodation for too long!
✨A ‘time in band’ system should be introduced so that people’s waiting time reflects their housing need, this is the fairest system and helps those in the worst housing
✨Lambeth council should not remove people in band D, this is unfair and hides the huge need there is for social housing.
❓Do you have any questions or need help using the online form? Get in touch with us: email: haslcases@gmail.comwhatsapp message: 07930 062282
For the last decade, Lambeth council’s housing waiting list rules have been a disaster for Lambeth’s most vulnerable residents – homeless rights have been undermined, hundreds of residents wrongly were kicked off the waiting list (until a legal challenge by HASL members saw almost 1,000 people have their accounts re-activated), the council’s scheme has facilitated mass queue jumping ahead of families in housing need, and the rules are complicated and confusing. The introduction of new and fairer rules will be a big improvement for Lambeth residents. But for everyone to have a safe, secure, council home in their community, we also need huge investment and expansion of high-quality, family-sized, 3, 4, 5 bed council homes. Join HASL’s campaigns so that we can make sure we all have the high-quality council homes we need and deserve!
Follow us on social media and help amplify our campaigns!
Our campaign has won our demand that Optivo/Southern Housing stop their eviction and that our member is re-housed in local social housing. Last month our member moved into his new permanent home in his local neighbourhood. He explained how he has settled into his new home:
I’m happy now because I’m living in my own home, it’s good for me, I’m happy. I’m relaxed now because I was in pain, I was stressed when I was facing eviction, but now I have my own house, I’m relaxed now.
The group is important for me, in all of my problems they helped me, they are like my family. Not just for me, for everyone, it’s important. Thank you, thank you for everyone who helped me. I’m happy for the group, what they did in my life.
Since March 2022 our member had been living with the threat of eviction and homelessness after Optivo /Southern housing served him with a section 21 eviction notice saying that the property where he had lived for the last 7 years “is no longer used for the Eritrean Community”. Our group and others, including people in London’s Eritrean communities, raised concerns that our member was being subjected to racist treatment by the social landlord.
Alongside campaigning on his case, our member instructed lawyers from GT Stewart solicitors to help him to defend the eviction proceedings. With his lawyers, he defended the possession proceedings on the basis that the section 21 notice amounted to direct discrimination as the cover letter showed that he was being evicted because he was Eritrean. They also argued that the eviction notice amounted to harassment under the Equality Act 2010.
After the defence and counterclaim was filed Optivo/Southern housing entered into settlement negotiations. They did not admit any discrimination but they did agree to re-house our member into local social housing.
It should not have taken a campaign and legal challenge for Optivo /Southern Housing to do the right thing. But when they eventually did, the staff we engaged with were very helpful and supportive showing what housing associations should be about and that the option of re-housing (and not evictions) is best for everyone.
Please support our letter action in support of our member Y who is facing eviction by Optivo (now Southern Housing). Over 200 letters have already been sent to Optivo’s CEO in support of our member. Send yours using our quick online tool here.
Optivo housing association served him with a section 21 eviction notice saying that the property where he has lived for the last 7 years “is no longer used for the Eritrean Community”. We think this is a racist eviction.
We are calling on Optivo housing association:
· Stop this eviction and to urgently re-house our member in local social housing – as they originally promised.
· Optivo must end the use of section 21 no-fault eviction notices against their tenants.
· Optivo must ensure that their tenants from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are treated fairly and with respect and not singled out for eviction.
On Monday this week, we were in court with our member where we successfully stopped Optivo’s Possession Order so Optivo can’t evict him for now. It was great to have so many members at the court showing their support for our member ‘Y’.
But our campaign continues to make sure that our member is safely re-housed in local social housing as he has been promised in the past by Optivo. The housing association’s handling of this case shows they have a long way to go to gain the trust of our member and other black, Asian and minority ethnic tenants.
Our friends Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC) have written an excellent blog about our member’s case other cases where housing associations have subjected their tenants to racist treatment.
It’s been another extremely challenging year for people who are living in bad housing conditions, who are homeless, and who are struggling on a low-income. This year we have seen a huge increase in rent rises, threats of eviction, and councils using hotels to accommodate homeless families – on top of the common housing problems such as overcrowded housing and issues with temporary accommodation that our group usually deals with. These are all signs of how bad the London housing crisis has got. Our meetings have been the busiest they have ever been with almost all of our meetings having over 100 people, with many of our members facing very urgent issues.
But there are lots of reasons to be hopeful. Our group is bigger and stronger than ever! We organised one of the biggest housing protests in years calling for the high-quality family-sized council homes we need. One HASL family won a huge victory in the High Court over Southwark council’s cruel treatment of overcrowded families. We have been able to run face to face meetings again after 2 years on zoom. We have worked with other grassroots groups and organisations sharing information on housing rights and our experiences of organising. We have helped our members to understand and enforce their housing and homeless rights which has stopped evictions and helped members facing unlawful gatekeeping to get temporary accommodation. With our support 32 HASL members and families have been able to move from temporary accommodation and other poor housing conditions into permanent social housing.
Every day across south London we are supporting people to understand and enforce their housing rights, we let people know that they are not alone, and we campaign for the good council homes we all need and deserve.
A big thank you to all our HASL members and supporters for your continued support. Our group is run by our members and the group would not function without everyone’s participation. Thank you to everyone who has helped in any way – participating in our group meetings, helping with translation/interpretation, telling friends about the group, liking our social media posts, joining protests, helping to make videos and so much more! We’ve also loved working together with our friends Public Interest Law Centre and English for Action and many other groups and new friends we’ve made over the year.
We hope everyone can have a good rest over the winter holidays and we’re looking forward to returning with even more energy, strength and solidarity in the new year!
Here are some of our 2022 highlights.
London’s biggest protest for 3, 4, 5 bed council homes
HASL’s October half-term holiday protest saw over 300 HASL members and friends march from Parliament Square to Downing street with our demand for the high-quality 3, 4, & 5 bed council homes we need and deserve!
Children destroyed a squalid temporary accommodation pinata and a housing waiting list pinata. Housing waiting lists and temporary accommodation should not exist because everyone should have good housing!
Huge High Court victory for Milton and his family over Southwark council’s cruel treatment of overcrowded families
On 24th May, the High Court overturned Southwark council’s cruel ‘deliberate act’ decision blaming Milton and his family for living in severely overcrowded housing. This is a huge victory for the family and for all our HASL members and supporters who have campaigned tirelessly for years. On the day of the High Court case, HASL members were there to show their support for the family. This important judgement will also support other families who find themselves in overcrowded and unsuitable housing due to the housing crisis.
Shortly after Milton and his family were placed in their rightful position in band 1 on the housing waiting list, they were able to successfully get a beautiful housing association home. Viewing their new home Milton’s daughter remarked “the living room is the same size as our old flat”. Milton and his family came to our HASL meeting to thank the group for our support and celebrate together: “Thank you to everyone in the group who came to protest in support of us. We had to submit so many documents [as part of their 4 year long case]. We couldn’t have done it without the support of the group. We will keep on fighting for everyone.”
Face to face meetings
This year saw us return to our regular face to face meetings two times a month after 2 years of zoom meetings. To help make the face to face meetings as safe as possible from Covid 19 we have been providing and wearing high-quality medical masks. Our face to face meetings have been busier than ever with almost all the meetings having over 100 people attending. A big thanks to all our members who have been helping to run these meetings as smoothly as possible. It’s been great to meet again in person and we’re so happy to have our Saturday kids’ activities running again with our amazing kids team.
Too Long in Temporary – Lambeth protest
In May, HASL members descended on Lambeth council’s Civic centre and held a noisy protest in support of Janeth and her family who have lived in temporary accommodation for 8 years. Insultingly Lambeth council deemed her husband’s recent cancer diagnosis to be a ‘less urgent medical need’. Shortly after our group protest, Lambeth council finally accepted that the family had an urgent need for social housing and have placed them in a higher position on the housing waiting list. But a shortage of 4 bed council homes means the family still face too long in temporary. MyLondon’s Ruby Gregory covered our member’s story and our group protest in her article here.
The reason Janeth and others have lived so long in temporary accommodation is because Lambeth council put all homeless households at the bottom of the housing waiting list meaning that they faced very very long waits for social housing. We’ll be continuing our Too Long in Temporary campaign in support of Lambeth homeless families who are trapped in temporary accommodation.
Some of our members’ victories
All throughout the year we have been supporting members to learn and enforce their housing and homeless rights and providing each other with vital emotional and moral support. We have buddied our members at their homeless assessments, helped them to find good lawyers to challenge terrible homeless decisions, helped our members to challenge unsuitable temporary accommodation, and helped them get their correct position on the housing waiting list. We have attended court 5 times with our members facing eviction to provide them with moral support through the stressful eviction process – in all but one case, the judges dismissed the landlord’s cases and our members were able to stay in their homes. In the one unsuccessful court support case we then got the council to offer the family social housing due to the high needs of their children.
With our support 32 HASL members and families have been able to move from temporary accommodation and other poor housing conditions into permanent social housing. We’re so happy for our members who have been able to move into secure social housing but we know the hardship and difficulties they suffered before they were finally able to get their new homes. In HASL, we know how life-changing it is to have a permanent home in our local community and each victory inspires us to keep on fighting for the high-quality, safe, secure, family-sized council housing we all need and deserve.
One of our members had been living in a single room in a hostel with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities for over 10 years. She had wrongly been placed at the bottom of the housing waiting list by Southwark council. We helped her to get the correct banding and took our complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman who ordered Southwark to make a direct offer of permanent housing. Our member finally has her own council flat. “I don’t have enough words to say thank you. Only I can say God bless you. You Change my life. If it weren’t for you I will be still in the hostel. Any way thank you again…Staff in the council they do whatever they want for the people like me (immigrants ) because we don’t know what the legal thing for our right. But I am sure a lot will win because of your help.”
One HASL family who were able to move to permanent council housing recently was a mother and her young daughter who is autistic. They were living in a cramped 1 bedroom private rented flat where they had suffered the constant threat of eviction with their landlord serving them 5 eviction notices over 6 years. With the support of HASL and a good legal aid housing lawyer, they were awarded the top band on the housing waiting list and within weeks were able to bid for a ground floor 2 bedroom council home. Our member came to our meeting to celebrate and she told us how her daughter was so happy to finally have her own bedroom.
Protecting Southwark homeless families’ rights
In last year’s 2021 end of year blog, we described how Southwark council were forced to settle a judicial review case that 2 HASL members took against them for operating an unlawful policy pushing homeless families into private rented housing and families in temporary accommodation further down the housing waiting list. As a result of the legal challenge that was taken by Camden Community Law Centre, Southwark council ended this so-called ‘trial policy’. This year, another HASL member started judicial review proceedings against the ongoing impact of Southwark’s unlawful “trial” on families in temporary accommodation who had been pushed down the waiting list. In order to avoid going to the High Court, Southwark council made our member a direct offer of permanent housing. This was a good outcome for our member but it meant that Southwark council was not made to explain their policy in the High Court. We are still working on getting accountability on this important issue for Southwark households and ensuring that it is never happens again.
Workshops
We have loved attending workshops and events with other housing groups, community groups and other social justice organisations. We’ve enjoyed talking about HASL and sharing our experiences of organising mutual support and collective action on housing and we have loved listening and learning from others and finding ways to work together. We spoke at a London Tenants Federation meetings about our experiences of overcrowding in social housing and we also joined the Homes for Us Assembly. We ran housing rights workshops with our good friends at PACT (Mums Space and Espacio Mama) and our new friends Hope and Unity. We spoke at Medact’s event ‘A People’s Economy: the fight for health and economic justice’ about how housing and health are closely linked and also invited Medact members to one of our Saturday group meetings. We also attended the Socialist Agenda for Southwark event with other local campaign groups. We spoke at the Public Interest Law Centre AGM about our experiences in HASL and practical tips for showing solidarity and we attended a special event organised by PILC for the launch of two brilliant pamphlets on homelessness and solidarity – Solidarity not charity: activist interventions in housing and homelessness and ‘Ch**owo ale bojowo’ (‘Things are f*cked but we don’t give up’): in memory of those we’ve lost
Media coverage
All year, our members have been busy speaking to the media about our experiences living in temporary accommodation and mould ridden, overcrowded private rented housing and other housing problems. In their interviews, our members have been highlighting the desperate need for high-quality, family-sized council homes. It can be scary and difficult speaking to the media, especially when we’re already dealing with the stress of bad housing, but our members have been incredible.
Our Fowsiyo and HASL kids feature in this Owen Jones video at the Home Office protest against the government’s inhumane Rwanda policy
HASL members are quoted in this Observer article on build to rent.
Grace spoke to Open Democracy about being forced out of her home borough of Lambeth and living in cold, dilapidated private rented housing as well as her important legal victory over Lambeth council
Our protest for 3, 4, 5 bed council homes featured in this article in the Observer!
Karen spoke to My London about facing eviction from temporary accommodation
Maria spoke with My London about mould and fungus growing in her private rented flat
A big thanks to Ruby Gregory for her excellent and sensitive reporting on housing cases across south London.
Other activities
We had our biggest summer picnic in the summer holidays with over 200 people attending. We didn’t quite have enough pizza and chocolate cake (even though we had 3 huge chocolate cakes!) for everyone, but we will make sure that we do next time. At the picnic HASL children coloured in placards for our October protest and also made a video to help promote our protest.
As well as supporting each other with housing problems in the group meetings, more and more of our members are telling us about the long-term health issues and disabilities that they are struggling with. We have been sign-posting our members to the wonderful Z2K for help claiming disability benefits and help challenging poor decisions by the DWP.
We attended a protest organised by SOAS Detainee Support against the government’s cruel and inhumane Rwanda policy. We will always fight in solidarity with asylum seekers, refugees, and all migrants. No one is illegal and everyone deserves a safe place to call home.
HASL joined the nurses picket outside our local hospital, St Thomas’. The NHS is very close to HASL’s heart. Members of our group who are living in temporary accommodation, overcrowded and other poor housing also work in the NHS as cleaners, nurses and healthcare assistants. We will always show solidarity with our members in their work places. Many of our members are also patients, some are struggling to access the high-quality care they need and are stuck on long waiting lists. Some have very positive experiences of the NHS. We need high quality council housing and high quality health care for everyone! You can spot our banner in this video
Our members – and many Londoners – are trapped living in squalid temporary accommodation and dangerous overcrowded housing for years. We know that the solution to the housing crisis is more safe, secure, family-sized council homes. We’re sick of waiting for years on long housing waiting lists.
Last week, HASL’s half-term holiday protest saw over 300 HASL members and friends march from Parliament Square to Downing street with our demand for the high-quality 3, 4, & 5 bed council homes we need and deserve!
We met at Parliament Square Gardens where children decorated house and number shaped biscuits (3, 4, 5 of course!) and then we marched on Downing street. Outside Downing street, we made lots of noise and sang chants with our demands – “How many rooms do we need to thrive? 3-4-5! 3-4-5!”. Children destroyed a squalid temporary accommodation pinata and a housing waiting list pinata. Housing waiting lists and temporary accommodation should not exist because everyone should have good housing!
At our group meeting after the protest we were still buzzing and energised from our protest!
There has been some amazing media coverage of our protest
Why focus on 3, 4, 5 bed council homes? We made a leaflet below explaining why our demand is for 3, 4, 5 bed council homes and we’ll be writing more about this on our blog soon.
All these activities and bigger, busier meetings mean that the costs of running our group have also increased. We’ve moved to a new bigger venue and our refreshments costs have also risen. Housing organising is hungry work and we want to make sure all our members are properly hydrated and have a healthy snack. Our new costs include making sure we have medical masks for everyone at our group meetings so that we can run them as safely as possible.
We don’t have a membership fee for HASL because many of our members are already in financial hardship and our members give so much of their time and energies running the group. So instead we ask for supporters to set up solidarity standing orders to give the equivalent of membership fees.
These standing orders from our amazing supporters help to cover our basic running costs. But we need more of you! From our experience, having supporters with regular standing orders is the best way to fund our group – it’s a way to build solidarity and the HASL family, it helps to keep our group truly independent, it means we can focus on energies on housing organising (rather than doing grant applications) and it’s a sustainable funding model so we’re confident we can meet our basic costs.
If you or someone you know have secure housing with a stable income, please consider setting up a £4 a month standing order to support our group. Send us an email at haslfinance[at]gmail.com and we’ll send you instructions on setting up a standing order. When we’re doing our accounts, the best thing is seeing all our supporters’ names on the bank statements!
Please help us spread the word to help us reach our target of 50 new standing order supporters.
More about our funding
HASL’s basics costs include hall hire, meeting refreshments, crafts for children’s activities, medical masks, printing, and protest props!
Our running costs are funded by our supporters’ standing orders. We also have a Trust for London grant which pays for our 2 housing group co-ordinators who are paid for 2 days and 1 day a week.
HASL is a completely independent group, we do not support any political party. We believe that with mutual support and collective action we can win together and fight for the high-quality council homes we need and deserve.
In the run up to local elections, political parties and those running to be councillors can be found making all kinds of promises.
Housing and homelessness will be key issues in these local elections.
We wanted to share some of our experiences of our local councils over the last 4 years and highlight the changes and action that need to happen now on homelessness, housing, and poverty in our boroughs. We hope that our experiences might help you to think of questions and issues to raise with people asking for your vote!
If you do get any answers from prospective councillors on these issues, please let us know! Send us an email haslcases[at]gmail.com
As you’ll see, as Southwark residents at the worst end of the housing crisis our experiences of dealing with Southwark council have been overwhelmingly negative. But don’t lose hope! Over the last 4 years with the efforts and determination of our members, we’ve won countless victories which have seen our members move into beautiful council housing and win other vital housing rights.
We welcome those running as councillors to take action now on the issues we’re raising. Your support is long overdue.
Blaming and punishing families in overcrowded housing for the housing crisis
Southwark families in some of the most overcrowded housing in the borough have been repeatedly blamed by the council for the overcrowding and penalised on the housing waiting list. Southwark council use the cruel ‘deliberate act’ term to refuse families in severely overcrowded housing the chance to urgently move to more suitable housing. We have repeatedly pointed out to the council and councillors how their use of ‘deliberate act’ targets families of colour and migrant families. Back in December 2020, a HASL family successfully challenged the council’s use of ‘deliberate act’ in the Court of Appeal but the council seem to be ignoring this judgement.
But right now, Southwark council are going to the High Court again to defend their ‘deliberate act’ decision that they have been punishing Milton’s family with for years. Their hateful decision told Milton that he should not have re-united with his wife and children here in London and that he should have left them on another continent! It is shocking and shameful that Southwark council are using public money, time, and resources to go to court.
We’ve also seen Southwark council threaten to prosecute vulnerable private tenants living in severely overcrowded housing for their housing conditions instead of taking on the slum private landlords!
‘Thought About Going Back to Peru?’ – Council Asks Family in UK Since 2004
As covered in Vice in December last year, a HASL member seeking housing support from the council was asked if she had ‘thought about going back to Peru?’ to solve her overcrowded housing. Our HASL member has 3 children who were all born here and have lived in Southwark for almost 2 decades in a single room – the family have suffered some of the most severe overcrowding we have ever come across. After this interview, unsurprisingly, the council decided that the family’s overcrowding was a ‘deliberate act’.
This offensive and racist question was defended by Cllr Stephanie Cryan who said: “… our staff are meticulous in their questions to ensure fairness of outcome in the result.”
The family have not received an apology from the council and we have not had any reassurance that this will not happen again.
Trying to push through changes to the housing waiting list rules taking away housing rights
Last year during the severe lockdown, Southwark council pushed through a flawed consultation about major changes to the housing register waiting list rules affecting some of Southwark’s most vulnerable residents. At the time, ourselves and other organisations asked the council to ‘pause, amend and extend’ the consultation in order to allow people to have the time to fully engage and respond to changes that would seriously impact them for the next decade. But the council insisted that there was no time to amend and extend the consultation. In the end they only agreed to a 1 month extension. The consultation closed on 1st June 2021 but the council have not announced anything about the consultation since then. We recently heard that the new rules are likely to be announced after June 2022 over a year later. This date is conveniently after the May 2022 local election. Why were the council rushing through a consultation during lockdown and then abandoning it for a year? What are their plans that they can’t announce it before the May 2022 elections? It looks like they are playing politics with people’s lives.
Where is the social housing?
Council leader Kieron Williams stated in February 2021 “the truth is the number of council homes in Southwark is going up not down“. But the reality has been the opposite on Southwark Homesearch where households on the housing waiting list bid for social housing properties. Since Southwark Homesearch re-opened in September 2020 we have seen the fewest number of properties on Southwark Homesearch ever. We have repeatedly asked the council for an explanation for this dramatic reduction in the number of properties available on Southwark Homesearch but we have not received a response to this question. The reduction is also confusing when there are a number of new council and housing association developments across the borough which we would have expected would have resulted in an increase in the number of homes on Southwark Homesearch.
One factor we think may be playing a part in the reduction is the council’s unaccountable use of direct offers to some homeless families in temporary accommodation. We wrote an open letter to the council in February 2021 about this asking about their use of direct offers and with three clear points we wanted to be addressed. While the council did reply to the letter, the response did not fully address our points or give us clear answers. Southwark residents on the housing waiting list still remain in the dark about the council’s use of direct offers.
Families stuck in temporary accommodation for longer due to unlawful housing waiting list queue jumping policy
From until July 2019 and December 2020, Southwark council were running an unlawful housing policy in the housing office pushing homeless families into private rented housing and families in temporary accommodation further down the housing waiting list. There was no public information about this policy and it was only uncovered by the efforts of HASL members. This policy was basically widescale queue jumping facilitated by the council where new homeless applicants were encouraged to take private housing in return for a higher position on the housing waiting list above people who have been in temporary accommodation for longer. The council only stopped this unlawful policy after 2 HASL members took judicial review proceedings against the council and the council settled the case by stopping the scheme.
The unlawful scheme is having devastating consequences for families in temporary accommodation who will have years added onto their time in temporary accommodation. It has also caused confusion, distress, and distrust for people on the housing waiting list as a result of the council’s behaviour.
Long journeys to school from unsuitable temporary accommodation
Many Southwark homeless households are being housed across London and as far as Essex, far from their communities, support, and schools here in Southwark. Being homeless is difficult enough, but being forced out of your neighbourhood adds to the distress and daily difficulties faced by homeless families. We’ve supported numerous families to successfully get temporary accommodation back in their home borough. But Southwark’s process re-housing families back in in-borough temporary accommodation is not clear at all adding more distress in an already difficult time.
We know that Southwark council faces pressures in sourcing suitable temporary accommodation that are often beyond their control but the council should still be doing everything they can to ensure people are housed in-borough and a clear system for families to understand when they can expect to get in-borough temporary accommodation.
No time for the biggest housing group in the borough?
Despite our efforts, there is not any meaningful engagement or dialogue between HASL and Southwark council on the serious housing issues we have raised. We have sent numerous emails to councillors that have gone unanswered, we have had meetings which result in nothing. Back in March 2021, HASL members went to great efforts organising and facilitating a zoom meeting with Council Leader Kieron Williams and Cllr Stephanie Cryan raising the key homelessness and housing issues affecting our group. We sent an email with minutes and action points and this went unanswered. Nothing we discussed was followed up on by the councillors.
HASL is a group of hundreds of families and individuals facing the worst end of the housing crisis. It’s shameful that Southwark council have repeatedly refused to engage with our group.
Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth 