Do you live in Southwark? Or do you have another connection to Southwark – for example, do you work in Southwark? Or do you have family who live in Southwark? Or do you have a homeless duty with Southwark council (but are housed outside the borough)?
If any of these apply to you – Please use and share our template email to fight for the rights of Southwark families in temporary accommodation and overcrowded housing!
Southwark council are running a consultation/survey to get our views on new rules for the social housing waiting list. We are concerned about a number of negative changes the council are planning to make. This is a vital opportunity for us to oppose these changes and protect the rights of homeless households and families in overcrowded housing.
If you are a Southwark resident or have another connection to Southwark, please show your support by using our online form to send HASL’s answers directly to Southwark council. Over 120 HASL families, living in temporary accommodation or overcrowded housing, helped to write these template email answers.
✨the council should not introduce policies that will push homeless families down the waiting list causing them to be trapped in dilapidated temporary accommodation for longer.
✨We challenge the unaccountable Annual Lettings Plan where housing officers will allocate housing outside of the waiting list rules
We’ve stopped Southwark council’s disastrous housing waiting list policies before and we can do it again – but we need your help to make sure as many people as possible use our template email.
The deadline for submitting responses to the consultation is Sunday 1st June.
We’ll be posting on social media soon about our template email as well so please look out for this and re-post!
HASL occupying Lewisham council housing office for our Halloween protest
2024 has been HASL’s busiest year ever fighting the devastating and spiralling homelessness crisis. We’ve regularly had over 200 people attending our twice monthly support meetings, mostly with very urgent situations. In the face of the horrendous housing situations our members are suffering, we have been organising mutual support, building our group’s capacity, and running campaigns and direct actions on a scale never seen before! In the worst ever year of the housing crisis, we have organised our biggest protests and won countless victories – many of them life-changing victories of secure, council housing in our local communities.
A big thank you to all our HASL members and supporters for your tireless support. Thanks to your efforts, 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 are building a movement for the high-quality council homes we all need and deserve. Thank you to everyone who has helped in any way this year – participating in our group meetings, helping with translation/interpretation, telling friends about the group, engaging with our social media posts, joining protests, cooking us delicious food, setting up a solidarity standing order, 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), Parent Action, 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 have the opportunity for reflection and goal setting that the end of the year brings.
We’re looking forward to returning with even more energy, strength and solidarity in the new year!
Over 300 HASL members serve eviction notice on Michael Gove
In April, 300 HASL members helped to make our biggest ever protest and the biggest protest of homeless families that London has seen in at least a decade. Our powerful, loud and determined protest demanded the family-sized council houses that we urgently need. We also delivered an eviction notice to Michael Gove at the Department 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.”
Watch the brilliant Reel News video of our protest (and please ‘like’ the video, leave a friendly comment, and subscribe to our friends Reel News channel).
Our biggest ever protest occupations
We kicked off the year with a protest occupation of Lambeth council’s housing office in support of Amin and his family after Lambeth council had wrongly said that they were not statutory overcrowded and were refusing them the emergency banding on the housing register that they qualified for. As well as the hazardous overcrowding, Amin’s baby daughter Dareen had been hospitalised 6 times due to the mouldy flat making the situation even more urgent. At the time, this was our biggest protest occupation with 60 HASL members participating and it was a huge success with the council quickly backing down and awarding the family the top band – band A – on the housing waiting list. Speaking to the media about his case, Amin explained: “This isn’t just a problem for us, it’s a lot of peoples’ problem as well, some maybe even worse. I’m hoping the council will help, not just me but other people as well.” Watch us in action here.
In October, over 100 HASL members descended on Lewisham council’s housing office in a Halloween themed protest occupation over the appalling treatment of our members Anabel and Maria. In total the two families had spent almost 4 years in hostels and Anabel’s 2 year old son spent his entire life living in a hostel. The incredible turn out, with members coming from across London and even from as far as Slough, made this our biggest protest occupation so far. In response to our protest, Lewisham council finally gave Anabel and her son a 2 bedroom, self-contained temporary accommodation flat close to Anabel’s mother who helps with childcare. The new temporary accommodation is a huge improvement on the previous conditions the family were enduring.
Reel News video coming soon!
We don’t just take action on housing! When our long-term, dedicated member Ingrid told us how she’d been the victim of a heavy-handed e-bike seizure by police where 10 police officers surrounded her and called immigration enforcement on her, we took action in support of her. Ingrid uses her e-bike for her job as a delivery driver. Since the police took her e-bike, she had been unable to work which meant she did not have money to pay her rent and feed her kids. She had bought the bike from a shop right next to the police station a few years earlier.
Straight after our housing meeting, over 50 of us – mostly women and babies – marched down to Walworth police station and occupied it calling for her bike to be immediately returned so that she is able to work again. The cops called more cops on us and forced us outside. Despite all of our best efforts, we were unable to get her e-bike returned to her. The police should not be targeting workers who are simply doing the best job they can in often precarious and exploitative working conditions. But if there is this response every time an e-bike is seized, the police will have to stop once and for all!
One new member to our group sent us this whatsapp message: “today was my first day to come to the group meeting. I never expected to do a protest for an electric bike. It was an enjoyable day and i hope that bike gets returned to its owner as soon as possible.”
For over a year, London’s streets have regularly filled with hundreds of thousands and even millions of people demanding an end to the war on Gaza and calling for a free Palestine. These have been the biggest and most sustained protests of our lifetimes. In October HASL members joined the diverse and family-friendly march through a very sunny central London with hundreds of thousands of Londoners and others who had travelled from across the country to be there. As one of our of placards read, we strongly believe: “Nobody is free until everybody is free”.
31 HASL families have moved into social housing this year
HASL member with keys to his new home
With our support 31 HASL members and families have been able to move from temporary accommodation and other poor housing conditions into permanent social housing in their local communities. Last year, we supported 23 HASL families to get permanent social housing, so this is a significant increase and comes in a year when the housing crisis has been the worst we’ve ever experienced. 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 and the fight that it took them to get their 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 member’s stories
At a recent HASL meeting, we were able to record on our HASL grid “enjoying my new home” as an update from one of our members. She had come to our group last year with a section 21 no-fault eviction notice. Her and her family had already been through the homeless process before and Westminster council had discharged their homeless duty with private rented housing which she was now facing eviction from. She was very distressed at facing having to go through the homeless process again and worried about where the temporary accommodation would be and the impact this would have on her children’s education. We helped her to find a lawyer to help her check the validity of the section 21 notice. While looking over her housing file with her original homeless application, he noticed that the council had not completed all the paperwork to discharge her homeless duty. After hearing this, our member wanted to fight to get her old homeless duty and bidding account reinstated, as she was outraged at how badly Westminster had treated her family years before by abandoning them in the insecure private rented sector. She got her lawyer to defend the private sector eviction and also argue to the council that her homeless duty had not been ended. Our member and her lawyer issued her case against Westminster council in the High Court arguing that her original homeless duty was still active as it had not been properly ended. The council settled her case agreeing that they still owed a homeless duty to her and re-opening her bidding account, and months later she was able to bid successfully for a 3 bedroom council home.
Some of our members’ victories
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. Our regular group meetings are the heart of our group where we give and receive moral and practical support on our housing cases and plan housing actions together. But outside of these meetings, on a daily basis HASL members are attending homeless assessments with members, helping to find good lawyers to challenge terrible homeless decisions, and doing court support.
This year, we’ve been at court supporting our members facing eviction on 8 occasions, and 6 of these times our members were successful in stopping the eviction. In two of the cases where possession was granted our members are taking appeals.
We have supported 12 HASL families to move from squalid, overcrowded, and sometimes even dangerous temporary accommodation into more suitable, spacious temporary accommodation. One of our members who had been living in a hotel with her two young children was moved to self-contained temporary accommodation a short walk from their primary school. She sent us a whatsapp message to update us: “Me and my kids just started living happier and comfortable because of you… all your sisterly and kindly support will stay in my heart and my entire life forever. Me and my kids are happy on this house!!”
As the homeless crisis has worsened, local councils have responded with even more aggressive gatekeeping to stop people from making homeless applications and getting the vital temporary accommodation they need. Over the year, we’ve supported 15 families to challenge unlawful gatekeeping and get them temporary accommodation.
Three families were facing being forced out of London to locations hundreds of miles away under the threat of destitution and we helped them to successfully fight this and remain in their communities in London. Two families were given private sector discharges to Halifax and Leicestershire, but we helped them both to get lawyers to successfully challenge these offers. Our member Hana said: “Together we win, I didn’t win alone, I had no hope before I found the group” Ayana was being forced by Tower Hamlets to Middlesbrough after they wrongly decided she did not have a local connection to Tower Hamlets (she did!) but they eventually reversed their decision with our community campaign.
At the start of the year, Edith’s family were left without heating and hot water in her family’s council home for two weeks. Edith’s young daughter Meghan is on dialysis daily for 12-13 hours and was due to have surgery to remove her second kidney when the boiler problems started. Southwark council repair workers were making visits to the flat but failed to fix the problem or give any time frame for when it would be fixed. After our tweet went viral and national media covered the case, suddenly Southwark council fixed the boiler within 24 hours so Meghan was able to return to a warm home after her surgery. We know that decades of funding cuts for social housing from central government means our social housing stock is being left to fall into disrepair – and putting lives at risk. But Southwark council showed that they can act quickly when they want to. Edith’s family are long-term members of our group and have been involved in an important group legal challenge (see below) as well as other legal challenges on their personal case this year fighting for the 4 bed council home their family need as well as supporting our campaigns for family-sized council homes for everyone.
Our member Patricia won an important High Court legal victory over Lambeth council after they removed 6 years waiting time from her housing register account when she separated from her husband. Such a cruel policy would potentially trap women with abusive partners for fear of losing their housing list waiting time if they were to leave. In Patricia’s case, the council’s actions would mean that her and her family would be trapped in temporary accommodation for years longer. But Patricia’s court case meant that Lambeth council were forced to back down and re-instate her housing waiting list time.
As well as housing problems, our members are routinely denied the benefits that they are entitled to. This year, we helped our member Elsa to reclaim a total of over £10,000 from housing benefit and Universal Credit as she was not receiving the correct amounts. Elsa’s different benefit issues show the massive underpayments councils and governments are able to get away with if people do not know their rights, and don’t have help to enforce them!
Our member Amira also took her PIP case to the Tribunal where she was eventually awarded the disability benefit that she needs to manage her complex and long-term health conditions. And we supported numerous other members through the stressful disability benefits process as well to ensure they receive the correct benefits.
HASL’s organising
HASL summer picnic in Burgess park
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 Parent Action.
In response to our growing group and the complexity of the housing cases our members are facing, our organising team has also been running and participating in two extra sessions each month – our work session and our grid session – where we work on tasks and review cases together building our skills and knowledge. These extra sessions have been really important in helping to collectivise and share out the tasks and action points that come from our main support meetings.
We have run 3 training sessions over the year including a homeless rights training in English and Spanish to help refresh our memories, share our experiences, and develop our knowledge of our key homeless rights.
While it has been an incredibly busy and intense year for everyone, importantly we’ve made time to socialise together. Over 200 HASL members attended our annual summer picnic at Burgess Park on a windy Saturday in August where we enjoyed face painting, cup cake decorating, animal balloons and K-pop. The highlight of the day was undoubtedly the Eritrean feast, alongside a spread of delicious cakes, pizza, and treats generously shared by our members. It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces as well as new ones. Of course, no HASL summer picnic would be complete without our spirited chants for 3, 4, and 5-bed council homes!
Throughout the year, we’ve been building our wider campaigns that come directly from the issues our members are facing including our campaigns on: 3, 4, 5 bed council homes, Too Long in Temporary, No More Overcrowding, ending private sector discharge, and raising the urgent housing needs of families with children with disabilities. We also have plans for a new campaign from our ever growing group of members without children who face the cruel priority need test, where they are regularly told by councils they are healthy enough to live on the streets. We will be calling on local councils to respect the DWP’s decision when someone is unable to work due to their health and award homeless assistance in these cases. Too often, we’ve seen members who the DWP accept cannot work due to long-term health conditions being told by councils that they are not in priority need which simply goes against all common sense.
Legal victory over Southwark council’s unlawful direct offer policy
Edith and her family were on the front page of the Southwark News for their legal challenge along with 2 other HASL families after social housing properties suddenly disappeared from Southwark Homesearch back in April with no explanation.
This is now the second time that HASL have caught Southwark council trying to make up their own housing waiting list rules without following the proper consultation process. On this occasion, this direct offer policy meant that there have been no homes for those in the highest housing need (such as living in statutory overcrowded housing conditions or having a severe medical need to move) to bid on and residents found themselves trapped in hazardous and intolerable conditions indefinitely.
HASL members, Refurbish Don’t Demolish and Southwark Law Centre at ULC East
From the Chilean embassy, The Ivey House Pub, UCL East, and London Review of Books letters section, our members have been busy speaking about the housing crisis, and sharing our experiences, which go over a decade, of how we can organise for the high-quality council homes we all need. We’ve also participated in discussions about housing and organising on the Aylesbury estate, Mayday rooms and Anarchist bookfair. We joined our friends Lambeth Mutual Aid at their Solidarity Sunday session and we participated at the Homes for Us annual summit. Our busy outreach diary this year reflects the growing interest in autonomous and grassroots housing action.
HASL’s FOI research on private sector discharge published in Guardian exclusive
Stop forcing homeless families out of London placard at our mass protest in April
HASL members sent Freedom of Information requests to every London council to find out how they are using the cruel and harmful policy of private sector discharge to gather information for our campaign to end private sector discharge. Our research was published in a Guardian exclusive where it held the number 1 position of ‘most read’ all morning and stayed at position number 4 for the afternoon. We were really energized and inspired to see how well received our research was.
Just before our research was published, HASL hosted a London-wide action planning meeting on private sector discharge attended by over 30 people from 8 housing and social justice groups from across London.
HASL have recently done Freedom of Information research to all London councils to look at their use of private sector discharge. We’ve found a doubling in the use of private sector discharge (since our last research 2017) and a huge increase in the number of families being forced to the North East of England under threat of being made destitute.
In our Frequently Asked Questions article below we answer the following questions about private sector discharge.
What is private sector discharge?
Why is private sector discharge so bad?
Has private sector discharge always existed?
Who does it affect?
Where are these private sector offers?
Do all local councils use it?
But maybe local councils use private sector discharge because they don’t have any other choice?
How can we end private sector discharge for good?
Our stories
What is private sector discharge?
Private sector discharge is when a local council uses their legal powers to end a homeless duty with a mandatory offer of private rented housing. Although it’s called an ‘offer’, applicants do not have a free choice of whether to accept. When a housing officer is using private sector discharge, they must give the homeless applicant a formal offer letter with details of the private rented housing and information about the consequences of accepting or refusing an offer.
Things can get a bit confusing because sometimes housing officers will make offers of private rented housing to a homeless applicant that are not official private sector discharge offers. If you are made an offer of private housing by your housing officer and you are unsure whether it is a private sector discharge offer, please seek professional legal advice immediately
A local council can use their discharge powers at both the Relief Duty stage, and when someone has a Main Housing Duty. This means mandatory private offers can be made while a homeless application is still being assessed, or even after someone has been living in temporary accommodation for 10 years.
When a housing officer makes an offer of private rented housing using private sector discharge powers, this is a mandatory offer that in most / almost all circumstances the homeless applicant must accept. The consequences for refusing are extremely serious (more on this below).
Why is private sector discharge so bad?
Private sector discharge takes away our homeless rights and forces vulnerable homeless people back into the private rented sector. As the private rented sector is the biggest cause of homelessness, private sector discharge creates a cycle of homelessness.
The forced nature of private sector discharge is very real and serious – if someone does not accept a private sector discharge offer, they can be left destitute as the council can end their homeless duty and evict them from their temporary accommodation. If the person then tries to make a new homeless application, they may be found ‘intentionally homeless’ and refused the Main Homeless Duty.
Private sector discharge has fuelled social cleansing with some local councils using their private sector discharge powers to force homeless families outside of London. Waltham Forest and Enfield councils have a particularly bad reputation for their treatment of homeless families and they have both forced families over 300 miles away to Hartlepool.
Usually when someone is forced into the private rented sector outside of their home borough, their housing register bidding account will be permanently closed meaning that they are no longer able to apply for social housing. Even if you are discharged into your home borough, your position on the housing waiting list may be affected as you are no longer homeless. This shows how some councils use private sector discharge as a tactic to make their waiting lists shorter, which means that they deny people the chance of ever getting permanent council housing.
Homeless families are faced with constant worry and insecurity due to the threat of private sector discharge. Homeless families in temporary accommodation can be so scared of being targeted for a private sector offer that they may not report serious disrepair and hazards in their temporary accommodation causing them to be trapped in dangerous housing.
Has private sector discharge always existed?
No. The Conservative government first introduced these powers in 2012 as a way to try to end the vital link between homeless duties and social housing. Before private sector discharge was introduced the only way that local councils could end a homeless duty was with an offer of permanent social housing. We know that the only way to end homelessness is with social housing and the previous right to social housing for homeless households must be restored.
Who does it affect?
All homeless households who made homeless applications since 9th November 2012 can be affected by private sector discharge – although there is a huge variation in whether local councils use it at all and how they use it (more on this below).
If your homeless duty was started by an application made before 9th November 2012 then private sector discharge does not apply to you and the council can only end your homeless duty with an offer of permanent social housing.
From our experience, we’ve seen how private sector discharge is racist because migrant families, families of colour, and those who do not speak English as a first language are disproportionately targeted for private sector discharge. Housing officers will look for homeless applications who they see as ‘easy targets’ for private sector discharge and are less likely to know their rights and be able to enforce their rights. We also see that other households are targeted because they are seen as ‘difficult’ for rightly complaining about bad conditions in their temporary accommodation.
We obtained Freedom of Information request data from Lewisham council in 2020-2021 showing that single mums were being targeted for private sector discharge
Private sector discharge would be unjust and harmful even if it was applied equally, but it is even more dangerous because councils use it in such a discriminatory way.
Where are these private sector offers?
Some private sector discharge offers are in a homeless applicants home borough, or neighbouring borough. But from the very start of private sector discharge, we’ve seen some local councils use it as a social cleansing tool to force homeless families outside of London to towns and cities hundreds of miles away. From our own direct experience and using Freedom of Information requests, we’ve found out that local councils have been forcing homeless families outside of London to other cities and towns across the UK including Stoke, Hartlepool, and Durham.
Some councils have earned a reputation for their particularly cruel use of private sector discharge to far away cities and towns – Waltham Forest and Enfield councils have recently been forcing their homeless residents over 300 miles away to Hartlepool.
These local councils are using their private sector discharge powers in particularly nasty ways against their homeless residents. It is clear that these local councils are not trying to provide suitable housing for some of their most vulnerable homeless families – they are making these offers knowing that they will be refused and families will end up destitute.
When finding a private sector offer to discharge a homeless duty, councils are required to provide the nearest possible housing to their community. The housing officer should also take into account the household’s personal circumstances such as work, education and other welfare needs. There are also other conditions and standards that the council/housing officer must make sure that the private sector offer meets. It’s clear from the locations that people are being offered that local councils are not doing proper assessments and it may be possible to successfully challenge these offers – but this often relies on the homeless applicant being able to find a legal aid lawyer to help them with their case, which is becoming increasingly difficult due to legal aid cuts.
Do all local councils use it?
No. Our latest research shows that at the moment 7 London councils do not use private sector discharge at all.
Some local councils use private sector discharge with particularly bad intentions such as Waltham Forest and Enfield, who have made hundreds of private sector offers which are outside of London in the last year.
Other local councils make very few private sector offers, which makes us wonder why they bother to use it at all and what process they have used to pick out these unlucky people.
But maybe local councils use private sector discharge because they don’t have any other choice?
The fact that not every council uses private sector discharge shows that they do have a choice. The councils that are using private sector discharge are making a political choice to do so. There is nothing compelling local councils to use private sector discharge against their homeless applicants. They could allow their residents to remain in temporary accommodation with a Main Housing Duty and the important protections that this gives to homeless applicants.
Furthermore, the use of private sector discharge can increase the cost to councils in the long run, as it often results in people being evicted from the private tenancy. This means that councils have to take a fresh homeless application and use expensive pay-per-night emergency accommodation, rather than letting people stay in longer term temporary accommodation.
Some councils try to say that their out of London offers are a result of the benefit cap meaning that nowhere in London is affordable for families affected by the benefit cap. But as was pointed out in a recent legal case, when a family is in temporary accommodation, they receive housing benefit and are not impacted by the benefit cap. By using private sector discharge against these families, councils are guaranteeing that they will be at risk of the benefit cap when they would be better off remaining in temporary accommodation.
Waltham Forest Council and Enfield councils’ extreme use of private sector discharge is thankfully not followed by other local councils. This shows that their cruel approach is certainly a political and ideological choice. There is no other justification for why they have both made hundreds of private sector offers outside of London when no other London councils have done this.
Local councils also have the choice to stand with their residents at the sharpest end of the housing crisis and to challenge and campaign alongside them for homeless rights and for the huge investment in council housing that we desperately need. We have seen very little, if any, evidence of this over the last 14 years of austerity.
How can we end private sector discharge for good?
Every day across London, local housing action groups such as Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth, Haringey Housing Action Group, Focus E15 are supporting our members with homelessness and housing problems with mutual support and collective action. This includes fighting private sector discharge when our members are affected by this. If you’re not already involved in your local housing action group, we encourage you to join one to learn your rights, help us build collective support and solidarity, and campaign together for our homeless rights and for the high-quality council homes we all need and deserve!
As well as fighting private sector discharge on a case by case basis, we want to end this cruel and harmful policy for good so that no one ever lives with the fear or faces the reality of being forced from their community and pushed into a cycle of homelessness.
From the very start of private sector discharge, it has been fiercely resisted. Back in 2013, in response to private sector discharge offers by Newham council to places as far away as Manchester and Birmingham, theFocus E15 campaign emerged with their inspiring slogan ‘Social Housing Not Social Cleansing’. At the time, their campaign achieved immediate successes of stopping their members from being socially cleansed from London and has also continued to win wider victories with Newham residents including ending Newham council’s use of out-of-London private sector discharge offers.
Over 10 years later, the Focus E15 slogan is even more urgent as councils increasingly use private sector discharge and as the locations get even further away.
Using the decades of organising experience of our local housing action groups, we want to build on the campaign started by Focus E15 and the individual victories our groups have achieved, and help to coordinate a London-wide campaign to end private sector discharge for good. Stay in touch with us to get updates and ways to be involved in this campaign.
Our stories
Comments from Haringey Housing Action Group member ‘Destiny’
I asked Enfield for help months before my eviction date, but they didn’t do anything. I went back to them on the day the bailiffs came, but they left me and my kids homeless on the streets. After three weeks of homelessness, they finally agreed to put us in a hotel. They left us there for seven months. We don’t have a kitchen, and we have to travel one and a half hours each way for school.
Then they offered me a private sector discharge in Stoke on Trent. My daughter is in her A-level year but they didn’t care. They said I should be grateful they chose Stoke on Trent, because some families are being sent seven hours away. I got legal help and Enfield withdrew that offer, but I don’t know where they will try to send me next.
We’ve lived in Enfield for twelve years but they still want to put me outside London. I know people round here, my friends and family are all local, but they want to leave me isolated. The way they treat people is horrible. I’ve gone through a lot already, I’m so stressed. Every day I still have to spend three hours taking my kids to and from school. It’s bad now, but I’m scared that they will try to send us somewhere even worse.
Housing association tenants demand urgent action on dangerous overcrowding
Five families from Lambeth who are all tenants of Metropolitan Housing Association have written an open letter to their social landlord calling for urgent action on dangerous overcrowding. The five families all live in housing that is so overcrowded that it meets the strict legal definition of ‘statutory overcrowding’ which is an out-of-date definition invented in 1935 to help identify and prevent slum housing.
In their letter to their social landlord, the families describe the difficulties of daily life in such overcrowded housing conditions including the serious impact on their mental and physical health.
They make 3 clear demands to their social landlord to resolve their cases and to help all Londoners living in overcrowded housing.
You can read and share our open letter to Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing Association here.
Pawan, a tenant of Metropolitan Housing Association and a member of this campaign, says: “I live with my husband and 3 children in a one bedroom flat in the Metropolitan Housing Association in Lambeth. The children are aged 8, 6 and 2 and a half. We are overcrowded and this is affecting our health. The overcrowding is causing damp and mould in the flat. We have no history of asthma in our family but because of our living conditions my youngest daughter has developed asthma. The children have no space to play inside or do homework. In the winter when it’s too cold to go outside they get upset. My oldest daughter asks me why she cannot have her own room like her friends.
We have been bidding for a bigger house since 2017, we were in Band C and we could only bid for a 2 bedroom house. We contacted the council to change our band and let us bid for a 3 bedroom house but they ignored us. When we contacted them again they told us we could rent privately or move out of London. We cannot afford private rent in London and we cannot move because my husband’s job is here.
Two years ago I heard about Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) in my ESOL class. I joined the housing action group organised by HASL and English for Action to get advice for my housing problem. HASL sent an email to Lambeth council and after one month they changed our band to Band B and let us bid for a 3 bedroom house. I was so happy! The council listens to HASL because together we are many people and we have power.
My husband is working all the time and I am learning English so it’s difficult for me to speak on the phone and write emails. HASL helps with this, they help migrant families a lot. I felt unwell before, you can be sick from stress. No one listened to me but HASL understood my situation and they didn’t ignore me, they gave solutions. This group is fighting for family life, for 3, 4, 5 bedroom council homes for families.”
Elizabeth Wyatt, a member of HASL, says: “As a social landlord, Metropolitan housing association must take urgent action on these hazardous, intolerable, severely overcrowded housing conditions that their tenants are enduring. Every day that these families are trapped in this housing is a day too long. Metropolitan housing association must do everything they can to ensure that their tenants are living in high-quality and spacious housing where they can thrive.
Just next door to one of our member’s, Metropolitan are building 30 brand new homes, but none of these are for social rent which are the homes our members and the majority of Londoners desperately need. One of our demands is that Metropolitan make these new homes into social housing and use them to re-house these 5 families who are living in some of the most overcrowded housing in the borough.”
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.
Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth 