HASL occupation of Lambeth town hall – social housing not social cleansing!

HASL occupy Lambeth town hall

Pictures from today’s action on Flickr can be found here.

This afternoon around 30 HASL members visited Lambeth council’s town hall demanding ‘social housing not social cleansing’. The local housing group, made up of homeless and precariously housed people, visited the town hall in the half-term holiday with their children to give the council a sense of what temporary housing feels like: cramped, noisy, and disruptive!

We were joined in our occupation of the town hall’s lobby by Lambeth Pensioners’ Action Group taking our numbers to 50+! Our sister group Haringey Housing Action Group also organised an action in tandem with ours.

Lambeth council refused to meet with our group to speak with us about our concerns and shamefully called the cops to try and evict us. About 10 police came and harrassed our members. We have still not received a response to our letter to Lib Peck about our concerns about recent changes to the social housing register and new powers to force homeless people into the private sector – both of which make everyone’s access to social housing even more difficult. We will continue our campaign on these issues and continue informing people of their rights if they are being pressured into the private sector. See our new leaflet here.

The action is one of many happening across London as part of the Radical Housing Network’s week of action.

Massive thanks to everyone who joined us today!

More info on why we were there…

HASL are protesting at Lambeth council’s use of the Localism Act to push homeless people into the private sector and at changes to the social housing allocations policy which de-link social housing from housing need. Members of HASL in temporary accommodation have experienced bullying from Lambeth housing office to find themselves accommodation in the private rented sector. They also saw their position on the social housing register decrease by a band as homelessness has been de-prioritised for social housing, even though they are desperately in need of secure housing.

Private rented accommodation is completely inappropriate housing, particularly for those who have already experienced homelessness – it is expensive, poor-quality, insecure, and often only ‘affordable’ out of London and the south of England. The private rented sector is the biggest cause of homelessness. Lambeth council should not be forcing homeless people into housing, outside of their communities, which will make them homeless again. They should not be making social housing more difficult for everyone to access, which is what changes to their social housing allocations policy has done.

The group are also concerned about people increasingly being housed in poor-quality temporary housing outside the borough away from schools, community and support networks.

Liz Wyatt, a member of HASL said: “Lambeth had the choice whether to use it’s new powers in the Localism Act to make homeless people’s lives even more difficult and undermine everyone’s access to social housing. It made the wrong choice and has implemented yet more housing policies which go against homeless and precariously housed people in the borough. We’re here to demand that Lambeth council stop socially cleansing its residents by forcing people into the private rented sector. We all need quality, secure, social housing and the council should be doing everything it can do ensure this.

“The Focus E15 mums campaign in east London saw them successfully resist being forced to Manchester, Birmingham and Hastings by Newham council. We plan do the same here in Lambeth and resist social cleansing with collective action. Our group has already had a number of successes in securing housing for our members.”

Bailiffs’ ball crashed by housing protesters

A bailiffs’ awards ceremony was gate-crashed on Wednesday evening by a sixty strong group of angry people. The action was called just a day beforehand by Focus E15 mums after an eagle eyed member of their campaign spotted the existence of the 2015 British Credit Awards with awards going for ‘Enforcement team of the year’ and ‘third party debt collections team of the year’. A table at the event was £4,000.

Crowd blockades bailiff entrance to fancy dinner

mattress, arm chair, kids toys, and boxes create a mock eviction to blockade the entrance

Focus E15 mums, other housing groups from across London, and squatters – all people who regularly confront and are abused by bailiffs – blockaded the entrance with a mock eviction; a mattress, clothes, kids toys, and an armchair were scattered on the pavement obstructing the bailiffs. The crowd of sixty people quickly built up and turned bailiffs who tried to get through them away. “How does it feel to feel scared?” asked one protester to a bailiff. “I’m not scared,” he responded as he called to the police for assistance and had his tux covered in paint. The area was filled with shouts of ‘bailiff scum off our street’ and sometimes simply ‘scum’ each time a bailiff appeared. More bailiffs, and badly placed protesters, were hit by paint bombs. Later on, someone saw a delivery of new suits to the building where the dinner was being held. A line of bailiffs and their friends formed on the other side of the road from the protesters contemplating the angry mob ahead of them.

Finding the entrance blocked, bailiffs queue on the other side of the road. But they’re not getting through this entrance

bailiff calling the police for help

After a while, the bailiffs were forced to use a side entrance to get to their fancy dinner. Police got pretty scared of the size and mood of the crowd and brought along more cops for back up and police dogs to guard the entrance. When the bailiff flow ceased at the main entrance, a group of protesters went to the side entrance where the bailiffs were sneaking in. At this point, the police made an incredibly violent arrest of a young man with four large police men pinning him down, one police officer hitting the man’s face on the pavement, another punching him in the body. He was kept in this position for around ten minutes with police keeping away people trying to film the incident and provide support to the man.

Police violently arrest and assault a young man

Police block off a road to protect the bailiffs

The police brutality aside, the evening was considered a great success by those of us who didn’t have the £4,000 for a table. A number of us remarked how therapeutic it had been to confront the bailiffs in this way. The energetic and militant action is another exciting articulation of the growing London housing movement; already this year, as well as the exhilarating evening crashing the bailiffs’ ball, there has been the impressive March for Homes and the ongoing Aylesbury estate occupation in Elephant and Castle. The Radical Housing Network’s week of action starts on Saturday 14^th February – Monday 23^rd. As well as these events, there is the daily community organising by a growing number of local housing action groups across the city who confront bailiffs on the doorsteps, make mass visits to the housing office in support of their members and provide moral support and solidarity. Wednesday evening brought together these groups and squatters from across London, making it clear that we won’t take baliff violence and the violence of the housing crisis.

Cops and bailiffs out of our communities! We all need quality, secure homes that we control!

Solidarity with the Aylesbury Estate Occupation!

Numerous Southwark housing campaigns and other local activists warmly welcome the ongoing occupation of a number of empty homes on the Aylesbury Estate. The current occupation of Chartridge block on the Aylesbury Estate has brought a much-needed spark of inspiration to local residents and housing campaigners.

Southwark Labour council has been publicly claiming how the Aylesbury was not going to be another Heygate, as ‘lessons have been learned’. The Heygate Estate decant programme has been widely denounced as an exercise in both the undignified displacement of locals and initiating the gentrification of the Elephant & Castle. However, exactly like on the Heygate, Southwark has been displacing the Aylesbury residents out of their immediate area and subjecting leaseholders, many of them elderly people who’d lived in the area their whole lives, to unnecessarily brutal Compulsory Purchase Orders. Abysmally low offers for their homes are forcing them to leave their neighbourhood and communities for good.

The right of tenants to return to a ‘regenerated’ Aylesbury would force them to take non-council tenancies in more expensive Housing Association flats, something many residents do not want. In 2001 a majority of Aylesbury residents voted ‘No’ in ballot on the Councils desire to transfer the estate out of council ownership. Not only is this ballot no longer being honoured, the Council has been unwilling to undertake a new ballot of residents on the question of refurbishment instead of a total demolition.

The Council attempts to dismiss the occupiers as ‘not representative’ of the Aylesbury residents while claiming Southwark is building ‘more affordable homes than any other London borough’. Council-backed developments such as the One The Elephant tower contain zero (0) ‘affordable’ homes, let alone any social-rented ones.

Local people know that council-rented homes are the most affordable and secure. Promises by the Council to build 11,000 new council homes in the next 30 years have been met with hesitant support, with no guarantees that this will not simply involve demolitions of estates without residents being balloted.

In a borough that has some 18,000 people on the waiting list for council (and not housing association, nor ‘affordable‘) homes, none of the above can be tolerated any longer.

Since they reclaimed the homes on the Chartridge block, the Aylesbury occupiers have been holding public meetings every day at 6.30pm, and each meeting has been packed with neighbours from the estate itself, other Southwark residents and campaigners from across London. The occupation clearly highlights the disasters of Southwark’s own and London housing and development policies in which profit gained from land speculation comes way before the people whose homes and lives are destroyed in the process. ‘Ordinary’ Londoners, be they the Aylesbury occupiers, FocusE15 mothers or the New Era Estate residents, are showing that alternatives exist and they work.

Our homes are not for sale.

Aylesbury Leaseholders Action Group
Aylesbury Tenants and Leaseholders First
Better Elephant
Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth
People’s Republic of Southwark
SolidariTea
South London Revolutionary Communist Group
Southwark Benefit Justice Campaign
Southwark Defend Council Housing
Southwark Notes
Southwark Tenants

London Coalition Against Poverty first meeting of 2015 featuring Focus E15 mums campaign!

London Coalition Against Poverty is a coalition of local groups who meet to provide support with housing and benefit issues (homelessness, benefit sanctions, welfare cuts, and dodgy private landlords), and take collective action on the issues we face. The local groups meet regularly in their home boroughs. You can read more about how these groups work in this brilliant pamphlet.

Every 3 months or so we all meet together in London Coaliton Against Poverty general meetings to share our expereinces and tactics, questions and ideas, and discuss how we can co-ordinate our activities.

For our first meeting of 2015 we’re excited to have some people from the Focus E15 mums campaign join us. As a main focus of the meeting, we hope to discuss the issues we’ve taken action on and what tactics have worked, what hasn’t worked or things we’re struggling with, and make plans and share ideas for issues we’re yet to tackle. We’ll be making plans for things we’d like to make happen in 2015.

London’s housing crisis is intensifying, and the main political parties are all promising further welfare cuts when we’re already struggling to survive. Come along to listen to and share experiences of organising mutual support groups and to help organise grassroots solidarity and action.

Our first LCAP meeting of the year is being hosted by Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth on Saturday 17^th January, 1pm at World Development Movement Offices, 66 Offley road, Oval, SW9 0LS. Whether you’re already involved in your local LCAP group, or you keep on meaning to be, or if you want to start a new group in your area – come along!

There will be food and childcare (please let us know if you need childcare so we can know numbers in advance). haslemail[at]gmail.com

Online action – social housing for Temi and her kids! Contact Southwark council to show your support

Join us on Tuesday 16^th December by emailing Southwark’s head of homelessness Ian Swift to show your support for much needed social housing for Temi and her kids. Feel free to use the template letter at the end of this blog or write your own email to Ian Swift. Ian.swift@southwark.gov.uk cc christopher.underwood@southwark.gov.uk and us on haslemail@gmail.com

Temi and her kids have been stuck in poor quality temporary accommodation for almost four years now.

Southwark council offered Temi unsuitable social housing which she could not access. When she refused this, they declared her ‘intentionally homeless’ and the family were evicted from temporary accommodation with no support from the housing office to find alternative accommodation.

During this process, Temi was subjected to racial abuse by one member of the housing staff who was reviewing Temi’s case. The person told Temi ‘as a Nigerian, you should be able to live anywhere…I have seen many Nigerians living ten in a room’. Temi clearly did not have a fair review process with this person involved.

Temi and HASL visited the town hall to speak to the head of homelessness Ian Swift about her situation and to ask for a suitable offer of much needed secure, social housing (which the council should have done in the first place!). Ian Swift refused to listen to her and called the police on Temi and the group to have us evicted from the town hall.

Ian Swift has refused to meet us as we requested in the letter we sent him to discuss and resolve this situation.

Temi has been forced to search for private rented accommodation but has been unable to find any in her home borough or even in London.  Southwark housing office and social services have provided no help to Temi to find decent private rented accommodation near to her children’s schools, their community and Temi’s workplace.

We say enough – Temi and her children need suitable, secure, social housing now! Email Ian Swift in support of Temi to show that she is not alone, and that we won’t tolerate the disrespect and mistreatment Temi has been subjected to. Southwark council were the one’s at fault offering unsuitable social housing, they need to make this right with an offer of suitable, secure, social housing.

Dear Ian Swift,

I am emailing in support of Temi and Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth to request an adequate response to the email they sent you last week. They requested a meeting with yourself to fully resolve Temi’s situation with a suitable offer of secure social housing for the family. After almost 4 years in poor quality temporary accommodation it is clear that secure, social housing for the family is vital. On top of this, Temi has been subjected to mistreatment, including racial abuse by one staff member.

Temi has attempted to find decent private housing in the borough near to school, community networks and work but has been unable to find somewhere. Southwark council have offered no help to Temi to find decent private housing in the borough.

Temi and her family have had many years of insecure poor quality housing. The last couple of months, where she has been threatened with eviction by social services whilst she has struggled to find private rented accommodation, have been particularly difficult for the family. The situation cannot continue like this. Southwark council must offer proper support to get secure housing in the borough for the family immediately. Please contact Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth about the situation as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Southwark council try to evict a homeless woman and her supporters who are asking for housing from their town hall

We’ve got some higher res photos of our occupation coming soon!

HASL made a mass visit to Southwark town hall this afternoon to demand social housing for our member T and her kids who are facing eviction and homelessness by Southwark council’s social services this week.

T and her kids have been stuck in poor quality temporary accommodation for 4 years now and are desperately in need of secure social housing in their home borough. This year, Southwark council housing office dropped their duty to house T after she refused an offer of social housing that she could not access due to medical reasons. The council deemed her ‘intentionally homeless’ and she was evicted from temporary accommodation. Of course, no one is intentionally homeless. For the last 6 months she has been living in temporary accommodation provided by social services, but they are refusing to house her any longer and she faces eviction this week.

The presence of our large group meant that Ian Swift, LB Southwark Group Services Manager for Homelessness and Housing Options, came to speak with us and we made our demand for suitable social housing for T and her kids. He returned to his office to look at her case on the computer and returned to our group where he told us incorrect details about her case. We attempted to correct him and discuss the situation more but he refused to listen to us and made yet another Southwark council eviction threat to T and the rest of HASL telling us “if you don’t leave, we will call the police and have you evicted”.

We decided to stick about to make our feelings felt, accompanied by drumming from a talented HASL member. Ian Swift call the police on a homeless woman and her supporters to have them evicted from the building. The police arrived and left. We left of our own accord, pledging to return.

Although we didn’t have our immediate demand met this time, our message that no one is intentionally homeless was made clear to the council and will continue to remind them of this. Everyone needs quality, secure, genuinely affordable homes. A big thanks to everyone who showed up and showed such awesome solidarity!

Join us at our last meeting of the year this Thursday at Papa’s cafe at 12pm to plan our next steps and to give and receive housing support, and plan action together for quality homes for all.

Support needed this Monday – social housing now!

T and her family are facing homelessness at the hands of Southwark council. If this goes ahead, this will be the third time the family have experienced an eviction and homelessness. Come along and show your support for her and her kids to be given the secure, social housing in their home borough that they desperately need.

Join us this Monday 8^th December at 2pm meeting on the south end of London Bridge next to the staircase with the big spike and near to Evans Cycles.

T and her family endured years in poor quality temporary accommodation before being offered unsuitable social housing by the council. When she declined this offer of unsuitable housing due to health reasons, the council declared her ‘intentionally homeless’ and she was evicted from her temporary accommodation. We know that no one is intentionally homeless! Let’s make sure the council learn this too!

Join our anti-eviction phone network for updates. Text 07741910527

HASL Kids Day & Christmas Party

Want to help get the quality, secure, affordable homes that we all need?

Come along to the Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth kids day and Christmas party!

Saturday 13th December, 1pm at Papa’s cafe, 10-17 Pulross Road, Brixton, SW9 8AF

Food/Games/Cake/Social

Come and celebrate the successes we’ve had!

Come to meet and find out more about the group.

Everyone welcome, bring your kids! – whether you’ve been involved in HASL for some time, are new to the group, or keep on meaning to get involved.

Join and share our facebook event.

Two evictions stopped – but why are social services making people homeless?

In the past two weeks, HASL has supported two families to stop evictions after social services told them that they would no longer provide accommodation for them. Both the families had nowhere else to go, yet social services decided to withdraw the only accommodation the families had. Social services were housing these families because they were homeless – why were social services making the families homeless again?

In both cases, HASL members visited the families on the day of the eviction to provide eviction resistance support – cramming together into the tiny, and in one case, rat infested temporary accommodation to inform the landlord that they wouldn’t be leaving as they had nowhere else to go. Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 means that no one can force entry into an occupied home and HASL were there to support the families to enforce this. In both cases too, the attempts by a landlord to evict them would have been illegal as they did not have the court order required for an eviction for these types of temporary accommodation. Social services were taking no notice as families in their care faced illegal evictions.

Supporting K and her family last week, facing eviction as Lambeth social services refused to provide accommodation any longer for the family, lawyers we had contacted the previous day managed to negotiate an extra week with social services so the eviction was averted. Yet, when we called social services that morning with K to see what the situation was, her caseworker had still been refusing to extend the accommodation and callously said that putting K’s children into care was the only thing they would do. This is often used by social services as a nasty threat – the cost of putting children into care is extremely high and therefore social services would be reluctant to do this, but they use it to scare the families and to stop them from demanding the support they need from social services. The caseworker was overruled and the family were allowed to stay for a further week, after not only being subjected to the threat of eviction, but also the splitting up of their family at the hands of social services.

This week, we were contacted by S and her family, facing eviction after Southwark social services said they would no longer provide accommodation for the family. Again, a group of people from HASL went to be there to provide support for when the landlord arrived and to liaise with social services to extend the accommodation. The family were living in one room of a huge building full of other rooms that were being let out to homeless families. Someone from the business came to try and conduct an eviction. They seemed surprised to be met with resistance, informing us that “we do this all the time” (illegal evictions without a court order) and refused to listen to the legal information – section 6 and his need for a court order – that we were telling him. “We wouldn’t be able to run our business if people don’t leave” the man told us. His poverty profiteering business model is not under threat as he would like us to think – for every single room here, he was getting £400 a week. Liaising with Southwark social services, we managed to get them to agree a further month in the accommodation, and so the staff of the slum accommodation were appeased.

Collective action meant that K and S’s families were able to resist evictions and keep a roof over their heads. These are important and concrete wins.

Both these situations raise important issues about the ways social services are treating people and also the disgusting and exploitative temporary accommodation being provided to homeless people – where illegal evictions are standard practice.

Solidarity Call Out for Abahlali Basemjondolo

Two black women in South Africa were recently violently killed – most likely by state actors – to little public reckoning. Although these women were both killed in separate incidents, they were both active members of Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) the shack-dwellers movement which has challenged local ANC rule for better housing and exposed local corruption.

Housing activists in New York, London and Budapest have called protests over the weekend in solidarity with all housing activists in South Africa facing repression particularly AbM to highlight their action. Details for the London demo below:

London – Abahlali UK Solidarity

• Date: Saturday 22nd November 2014
• Time: 2pm (local time – GMT) – 3pm
• Location: South Africa High Commission, South Africa House, Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DP
• Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1549088555302801/

Please take a moment to sign this petition that will be submitted to South Africa House, London on Saturday 22nd November. 

Watch this 5 minute video on the assassinations:

Below is the petition text:

Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) is a grassroots, democratic and member-led organisation based in Durban, a city in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. AbM have an impressive record of exposing corruption and asserting the constitutional rights of thousands of the marginalised shack-dwelling people. We, the undersigned, are in support of the resolve of AbM members to strive for more participatory forms of development and to advance the struggle for access to urban land.

We condemn all assassinations, political murders and other acts of violence and intimidation against AbM members and housing rights activists. In the past 18 months, four housing rights activists have been killed. This includes two prominent AbM members:

1. Thembinkosi Qumbelo (assassination, Cato Crest) – 15 March 2013
2. Nkululeko Gwala, aged 34 (assassination, Cato Crest) – 26 June 2013
3. Nqobile Nzuzua, aged 17 (police murder, Cato Crest) – 30 September 2013
4. Thuli Ndlovu, aged 36 (assassination, KwaNdengezi) – 29 September 2014

We also note that more than 450 political assassinations have been documented in post-Apartheid South Africa with the majority taking place in KwaZulu-Natal province. We are troubled by the reports of collusion by the police and elected officials in the recent attacks on the Cato Crest. We place our solidarity with all activists facing repression in South Africa.

We believe that it is the right of people to engage in activism that is free of repression.

• We call on the South African government to create safe spaces for peaceful dialogue between housing activists and local, national and provincial authorities
• We call on the South African government to investigate the murders of these activists through a formal process of inquiry.
• We believe that the democratic state of South Africa has a duty to protect its citizens.

(with thanks to The Multicultural Politic for the main content of this post)