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!
Here are some of our 2024 highlights – and sign-up to our monthly newsletter here to hear about our news throughout the 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
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
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.
It was only in a Southwark News article on 7th June that the council let word slip out about their new direct offer policy.
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.
With the help of Public Interest Law Centre, 3 HASL families launched a legal challenge. In response to the legal letter sent by PILC, the council immediately stopped the unlawful direct offer policy and social homes finally returned to Southwark Homesearch housing register website.
Outreach
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
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.
You can read our full research here and our guide to private sector discharge here.
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.
Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth 