Disrepair and Disrespect – Struggling with Southwark Council

We’ve been documenting the unacceptable, and often unlawful, ways in which Southwark Council treats those it has a duty of care to for some time now. This pattern of behaviour becomes increasingly and unsettlingly familiar with each new case we encounter.

Recently, L approached HASL. She has been living with her family in social housing provided by Southwark for 22 years. L has been battling with Southwark Council for the entire time – to try and get essential repair work done on the property and to be treated with respect. In attempting to make Southwark realise the severity of the problems, L has received backing from solicitors and a number of experts regarding the problems within the property. The family have been repeatedly moved out of the property for “repairs to be made” only to return to the same problems and the same poor attitude from Southwark. Attempts to make the property safe have been met with inadequate offers of alternative accommodation and coercion from Southwark.

L sought the advice and support of a new solicitor who progressed to presenting court proceedings to get the disrepair addressed. In the end, L made a successful bid for another property nearby. On moving into her new property, unfortunately a few snagging repairs requirements are outstanding – an issue we’re now working together to try and solve.

L believes, as do we, that no-one should have to face this kind of treatment. Everyone deserves access to secure and safe housing, and it should be the absolute minimum requirement that housing providers should treat their tenants with a sense of basic decency and respect. Instead, L who already faces the stress and complication of long term chronic health conditions has been met with intimidation, racist and classist prejudice and an irrevocable, irreparable and unfair service. We will be working together to make sure Southwark Council are held accountable for their behaviour in dealing with L’s housing situation.

Many of the problems we’ve encountered with Southwark Council are not isolated to individuals. Are you a Southwark council tenant facing similar issues of disrepair or mistreatment? These are conditions no-one should be expected to face, and they definitely shouldn’t have to be faced alone.

Get in touch – Come along to one of our meetings, or come share some food with us on Sunday at our lunch club. Over the last 2 years, we’ve demonstrated that we can win better housing, when we do it together. Join your local housing action group! 

HASL get member housed back in her community!

Yesterday morning, about thirty HASL members and ESOL group English for Action, visited Southwark council’s town hall in support of our member Ruth and her family who had been housed by the council all the way out in Woolwich.

This accommodation was far away from their school, community and work places. To get to school her children had to travel on 3 buses for 2 hours, and then they had to do this after school to get home again. That’s 20 hours commuting each week on 30 buses! This was having an extremely negative impact on the children’s education and well being. Everyone needs and deserves decent housing in their community. We won’t let people be forced out.

We went to demand ‘A home near school’ and after a short time in the town hall’s lobby – where we played Twister, Jenga, and talked with staff about the housing crisis and our group – we were told that alternative temporary accommodation on the Aylesbury estate* had been found for the family. Ruth was relieved and happy at the outcome, as we all are that Ruth and her family are now back home.

But it shouldn’t take 30 people occupying the town hall for homeless people and families to be treated well and provided with suitable temporary accommodation. And we were appalled by one housing managers comments when we asked him why no furniture (no beds!) was provided in the accommodation – “it’s got a roof, it’s liveable”. We doubt he’d call this liveable if it were provided for him and his family. This is no standard or way to treat homeless people.

We want to challenge the poor treatment and provision for homeless people in Southwark and fight social cleansing! Get involved in HASL to help us do this!

Thank you to everyone who came and supported Ruth. Don’t struggle alone! Together we can win!

*The Aylesbury estate is in the process of ‘regeneration’ (demolition of council housing and its replacement with unaffordable private housing = social cleansing). Secure tenants are being moved/forced out leaving perfectly habitable flats empty. Southwark is using some of these flats to house homeless people (and collect rent from them!).  This seems sensible enough as it keeps people in their home borough (and makes Southwark council money). We oppose the demolition of the Aylesbury estate and support all residents and locals who are fighting for it. Check out Fight for the Aylesbury for more information and action.

Eviction resistance success in Camberwell!

photo credit: People’s Republic of Southwark

This morning, around 40 people (including residents from the nearby Aylesbury estate campaign, Eviction Resistance, Revolutionary Workers Party, neighbours, and us!) squeezed onto a narrow balcony in Camberwell responding to a call out from 14 year old Saffi to help stop the eviction of her family by Southwark council.

Saffi wrote:

“We constantly keep moving from one house to another nonstop for over the past years. This is extremely difficult because I am missing school and I have my GCSE exams and my family have been undergoing this difficult process all our life and I feel we need to put a stop to this. Thus I am pleading with all my might, that you come down and support us on along with some other generous people coming to peacefully protest and make our voices audible concerning the way the council are treating our community.”

Saffi, her sisters, mother, and grandmother are being housed by Southwark council in temporary accommodation, but as Saffi says, they have been continually evicted by the council and moved about – including being sent out to Plumstead. They are currently living on an estate that the council has marked for demolition.

The council were trying to evict the family for alleged rent arrears. They have lawyers who are appealing but in the mean time, collective action kept the family in their home. HASL have come across a similar situation which we wrote about here, where they evicted a family in temporary accommodation over alleged rent arrears and declared them ‘intentionally homeless’. But having rent arrears does not automatically make you ‘intentionally homeless’ as Southwark council seem to believe. We’ll be keeping an eye on Southwark over this.

Bailiffs and builders hid round the corner talking with a couple of police after witnessing the balcony full of people and banners determined to block their way.

Once we were sure the bailiffs had gone, Saffi’s mum delivered a powerful victory speech and invited us all in for a victory feast of jollof rice, chicken, and plantain.

Eviction resistance victory feast!

A moving and inspiring morning! Thanks to everyone who came down!

If you’re facing eviction or worried about any other housing or benefit problems, you’re not alone, get in touch with your local group so that we can support each other and win! If you live in Lambeth or Southwark join HASL’s eviction phone network here and follow Eviction Resistance, London Coalition Against Poverty, and Radical Housing Network for housing action beyond Southwark and Lambeth.

Gatekeeping culture at Southwark council housing offices

 

– “Homeless? We will check, check and check again” Poster in Southwark Housing Office

The following testimony highlights 4 types of gatekeeping tactics, employed by Southwark council against homeless people, that are additional to those raised recently in the High Court after a legal challenge by Hansen Palomares: 1) Delay and time wasting, 2) Initial allocation of temporary housing for two days, 3) Isolation, 4) Verbal intimidation and abuse. Our first request of Southwark Council is for senior housing officers and councillors to reaffirm that gatekeeping practice 3) isolation of the homeless person by refusing them an advocate is against their policy and best practice.

Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth members have had extremely bad experiences of visiting Southwark council’s housing office in Peckham. We blogged here about staff physically and verbally abusing our members who were trying to access housing that the council must provide. Another member reported being racially abused by a staff member. Most recently we were contacted by A who had visited the housing office ten times presenting herself as homeless and asking for the support that they have a legal duty to give her and her family. At all of these visits she was turned away by the staff. There is also the well publicized case of Southwark housing officials conspiring to make a man homeless.

We are organizing together to challenge the culture of disrespect and abuse that often vulnerable people are subjected to at Peckham housing office. As well as providing practical support , including accompanying each other to visits to the housing office, we have been speaking with people outside the housing office about their experiences and giving them leaflets about their rights. We have lots more activities planned as part of our campaign, so get in touch with us if you’d like to be involved.

At the same time as we were providing practical support to A in the housing office and challenging the gatekeeping we were confronted with, a legal challenge by Hansen Palomares lawyers won a High Court order that requires Southwark council stop its unlawful practices of turning away homeless applicants without conducting proper investigations into their case (under the Housing Act 1996 local authorities must provide temporary accommodation to anyone who it has reason to believe is homeless or threatened by homelessness, is eligible for assistance, and is in priority need – for more information see the London Coalition Against Poverty leaflet). We hope that this legal victory will bring about change in the housing office. But we also know from first-hand experience that the gatekeeping at Southwark goes far deeper than turning people away from the start. Those who do manage to get a homeless application started at the housing office are subjected to a culture of bullying and intimidation that follows homeless applicants through every level of the process. They are also given misinformation and constantly set up to fail by the staff there. This means that many people who have started a homeless application could be forced to abandon it or told that they have made themselves ‘intentionally homeless’. Our recent experience with A saw us encounter these gatekeeping tactics. Staff consistently acted against the interests of A, doing their best to end the homelessness application whenever they saw an opportunity.

A’s case – How many people does it take to make Southwark council conduct a homelessness application?

A and her family were living in severely overcrowded accommodation which meant that legally they counted as homeless. A made 10 visits to the housing office to get help with her housing situation but each time she was (unlawfully) turned away. She got in touch with us and we were able to help her finally get a homelessness application appointment. Having experienced problems at this housing office before, we organized for other HASL members to go along to the housing office in support of A. In total, it took three full days (in addition to her previous visits) at the housing office, with a number of supporters each time, and a housing lawyer on the other end of the phone providing legal backup to get temporary housing. What should be a really basic process required an enormous amount of labour hours and was shown to have been impossible to navigate alone.

At the initial meeting, we were handed 5 different forms to fill in, some several pages long, to complete. One of these forms was a ‘priority need’ form which included 71 questions – none of them actually establishing whether the person was in priority need, but instead asking about hobbies and whether you’d accept private rented accommodation if they paid the deposit. These questions seem to be tricking the applicant into making themselves seem intentionally homeless – for example, if you said you enjoyed shopping or gardening, they could use this to question the medical issues you raised, or if you stated that you did not want private accommodation, this too could be deemed as making yourself intentionally homeless for failing to look at other options (take a look at the questions and our analysis here). Another sheet of paper had a check list of all the documents that A was told she must provide. Across the top of the sheet it informed us that if we failed to provide all of these within 7 days, her case would be closed. Of course, for many homeless people, these documents could be at friends’ houses, lost, or difficult to obtain in the weeks time frame.

After a morning of form filling, A had an interview in the afternoon. The HASL supporter requested to accompany A to the interview for moral support and also to take notes (especially as English was not A’s first language). The woman who was going to conduct the interview responded to this request by shouting that they would not be allowed into her interview before storming off. We were extremely concerned about A being refused a supporter to the interview with no reason given other than ‘this is my interview’, as well as at the abusive behavior of this staff member.

Day 2

We return to complete the process and the HASL members there in support are once again threatened, now by the worker who tells us she will call the police on us without any cause. They send A to the other building in which the temporary accommodation will be allocated but in this office they tell us that the other office has not sent the permission through. They take another several hours to do so. By which time completing the allocation is rushed and so a panicked A leaves for work running late. Her husband is forced to collect the kids from school and take them on several busses to meet the landlord. The accommodation however has only been granted for two nights, meaning A is forced to return to the office to extend it.

Day 3

Accompanying A once more to the office to have her accommodation extended the worker tells me that only two days were granted ‘because if it was any longer A wouldn’t bring back the forms she is required to complete.’ A has been aided in filling out these forms since her English is not fluent. One form includes a personal statement on why she is homeless. The housing worker tells us that she must now complete the forms from scratch in front of her with the aid of a translator because she does not believe A wrote the forms herself. The meeting is not allowed to begin until the HASL members there for support leaves, a manager is called, more threats are made and we are forced to leave A alone to carry out what is effectively yet another homelessness interview lasting three hours. By which time the allocation procedure requires A to call in sick for work, risking her job and so putting her and the family at risk of homelessness.

Making the process take all day was a way of disciplining A via her housing need, causing her three times to chose between completing the process or risk losing her job.

Eventually, A and her family were provided with temporary accommodation –having successfully challenged all the gatekeeping. This was certainly a victory for all involved. This case shows the importance of practical support and solidarity, as well as the dire need for significant change in the culture at the housing office.

You can take a supporter with you to the housing office

There are a whole load of reasons why someone might want to take a friend or supporter with them to meetings and appointments with the council, or any other institution (for example the Job Centre or Work Capability Assessment interviews), particularly when making a homelessness application. These reasons may include help with note taking and simply moral support during what can be a very stressful time. It is your right to have someone to come along with you to any appointment or interview if you would like this. We hope that Southwark council housing staff and Southwark councilors will confirm that this is indeed the case, that they recognize the importance of this right to have someone with us at meetings, and that they will make sure that this policy is implemented in the housing office. We will be contacting them with this blog post about our right to support and requesting that they send us a written response.

HASL members accompany each other to appointments, if you’d like to get involved in this buddy system, please get in contact or come to one of our regular meetings.

As well as having our right to be accompanied respected, we want an end to all other gatekeeping practices and an end to the abuse and disrespect that people are subjected to by staff. We want to see Southwark council acting in the best interest of their homeless residents, making sure that they get much needed local, secure, social housing.  They’ve got a lot work to do to make this a reality as the two recent damning High court judgments and our testimonies show. We will continue to support homeless people visiting the housing office and will work with lawyers to ensure that the recent High Court judgment is followed by Southwark council.

 

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.

Massive Housing Solidarity, Southwark Council Ineptitude

Southwark Town Hall occupation

UPDATE 20/10/2014 We heard from Ruth on Monday that on Friday (the day after our occupation) the council had got back in contact with Ruth and offered her accessible temporary accommodation for Ruth and her kids. Although a one bedroom flat for Ruth and two kids is still not appropriate temporary housing. Massive thanks to everyone who came down and supported.

We left Ruth this evening heading to temporary housing we had achieved after a 2 hour occupation of Southwark town hall and a 3 hour wait at the Peckham housing office where we were subjected to the abuse of aggressive male staff members. We had met together at 10am in the morning and had believed the situation had been resolved with decent temporary accommodation for Ruth and her kids.

Unfortunately, when Ruth arrived at the temporary housing, she found out that Southwark council had given her housing that had stairs leading up to it. Because of her disabilities, she could not physically access this accommodation. This is yet another massive failure of Southwark council in their duty to Ruth and her kids to add to the massive list of failures.

This same week, a damning court judgement highlighted some of the issues in Southwark council’s housing department. Cllr Richard Livingstone tried to brush these aside as a ‘one off’ but Ruth’s situation shows similar abuses and neglect from housing officers. We know for sure that these are not one offs but that this is the culture of hate that operates in the housing office.

The occupation this morning saw twenty supporters and Ruth make their presence felt in Southwark town hall’s lobby. The brilliant Focus E15 mums travelled across from East London to offer their support and solidarity. A Spanish housing activist over here for the counter-MIPIM mobilisations also joined. After an hour or so, when the suited officials of the town hall had enough of angry mothers sticking up for each other and telling them to sort things out, and realised we weren’t going to leave until our main demand of decent temporary housing was met, they agreed that they would get Ruth temporary accommodation.

This felt like a huge victory as our group had managed to overturn a negative decision made by the council through our collective direct action. We were told we could collect the keys to the accommodation from the Bournmouth road housing office. We had been reluctant to go there after a previous visit where staff had been rude to us, with the manager shouting in our face before storming off, but we were assured it would be simple and quick.

Two important questions arise – Why did it take 20 people occupying the town hall before Southwark were able to use their discretion to house Ruth temporarily whilst her appeal took place? Since receiving the appeal lodged over a week ago, which listed Ruth’s health problems and that she has two young children, why did Southwark decide they did not want to offer her temporary housing when it was in their powers to provide this?

Why did Southwark Council offer a woman with mobility issues accommodation which had stairs. Is there not a system that looks at the accessibility of accommodation and makes sure that people are matched up with housing they can actually safely enter and live in?

Leaving our awesome occupation at the town hall, a smaller group visited Bournemouth Road in Peckham to sort out the temporary housing we had been promised. Before we even entered the building, the male staff there were confrontational, abusive, aggressive. They had obviously been told that a group of us were coming and decided the appropriate way to react was to behave in this way. We were a group of 4 women and one baby and the male staff were verbally abusive, shouting in our faces, refusing to give us their names, security staff refusing to show us their badges. One physically intimidated one of the women standing close and moving forward so that she had to back out of the building to get away from him. As he did this she informed him that he could not physically assault her in this way, to which he replied ‘I can assault you’. The men then came outside to take photos of the women outside and informed them that they were going to put them on Facebook.

The experience was extremely distressing for all of the women who told the male staff they felt scared and intimidated by their behaviour. We saw these same staff members verbally and physically abuse other women who were separate from our protest as they entered the building. The aggressive, intimidating behaviour of the male staff is particularly concerning seeing as the housing office is a place that vulnerable women,  many of whom may be survivors of domestic violence, visit to try and get help.

Something must be done about the behaviour we experienced today and that is clearly standard practice in the housing office. The joyous feeling of our occupation felt quickly lost as we were subjected to these people in the housing office and had to wait for three hours for temporary accommodation to be found – which in the end was not accessible for Ruth. We made it clear that we would be supporting Ruth until she gets the safe, secure housing she and her family need. We will also be taking on the toxic environment of Southwark housing until something is done about this. The massive housing solidarity today from people across the borough and across London is inspiring and we’re gonna keep on growing!

Support needed this Thursday – temporary housing now!

UPDATE: We will be meeting tomorrow – Thursday 16th – at 10am on the south end of London Bridge by the staircase with the big spike, next to Evans cycles. If you are Brixton based, we will be meeting outside Brixton tube at 9am to head up together. Join us there to show your support for our HASL member and her family and demand housing NOW.

One of our members has faced appalling treatment by Southwark council which saw herself and her family made homeless. We have got legal support from a community law centre and are in the process of appealing the decision that made them homeless and have requested temporary accommodation from the council whilst the appeal takes place. However a week on, Southwark council have failed to provide the desperately needed temporary accommodation for the family. Join us on Thursday 16th October, meeting at 10am on the south end of London Bridge next to the staircase with the big spike and near to Evans Cycles to demand temporary accommodation now. For Brixton based people, meet at 9am outside Brixton tube station to travel together.

Southwark council have shown extreme disrespect for our member and their process has caused immense harm and distress to the family who do not have a safe and secure place to stay due to the council’s negligence. Join us there to show your support. Check our blog, facebook and twitter for updates.