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.
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.
In June we were shocked to find that Waltham Forest Council were trying to force our member Monica and her family to permanently move to Stoke-on-Trent – over 170 miles away! The family could not attend the viewing as the husband had recently got work in London and in response Waltham Forest tried to evict the family from their temporary accommodation. We wrote a report about these “private sector discharges” of homeless duties in 2017 – we found that actually very few London councils were trying it force families out of London. This shows it is a cruel political decision and that homeless families can be found housing in London if councils try. Waltham Forest Council tried to say they were moving the family to Stoke because of the benefit cap, but in fact the family would also have been hit by the benefit cap in the Stoke property!
The family is currently challenging the council with the help of a lawyer, and members rallied on Monday to make sure they were not evicted from their temporary accommodation. The media has also been great at covering this important case:
Watch the short video we made with Janeth where she speaks about the difficulties of living Too Long in Temporary and the impacts on her family’s health.
In July this year, it marked the 6th year Janeth and her family have been living in temporary accommodation. Originally from Lambeth, the family have been housed in 5 different temporary accommodations across London. Lambeth council place homeless families in band C at the bottom of the housing waiting list meaning that Lambeth’s homeless households may never get the permanent, safe, secure council homes they need. We are supporting Janeth’s case and all homeless households who have spent Too Long in Temporary.
Janeth’s oldest child, aged 9, has spent over half his life living in temporary accommodation. Her other 3 children have spent all their lives living in temporary accommodation. The temporary accommodations have often been very poor quality – they have lived in a hostel, a severely overcrowded flat, and many of the properties have had infestations and damp and mould issues. The poor quality housing and constant moving has seriously affected the family’s health with the children developing coughs, asthma, skin rashes, and anxiety. They have suffered these health conditions for many years. Her oldest son is constantly worried that he will have to move home again and change schools. Homeless households and others suffering from bad living conditions are also at higher risk of catching and being worse affected by Covid 19, a Lancet article highlights the particular vulnerabilities of young children in temporary accommodation.
The family have submitted strong and detailed medical evidence to Lambeth council about the impact of their housing conditions on their health. The children’s school has stated that the housing situation is negatively impacting the children’s health and their future educational outcomes. Their GP called for an urgent move. Yet, despite this evidence, Lambeth council have refused to award the family band B on the housing register for an urgent medical move. The family received a very short and vague decision letter in July this year which failed to properly engage with the evidence submitted. Camden Community Law Centre are helping the family to review the decision and the family have now been waiting over a month for a response.
We are calling on Lambeth council to award the family band B based on the serious health issues they continue to suffer in temporary accommodation so that they can move into the permanent council housing they desperately need. As well as supporting homeless families who have an urgent medical need to move to permanent council housing, Lambeth council must also urgently change their housing allocations policy so that homeless households are not stuck at the bottom of the housing register with no hope of council housing.
We know there is a desperate shortage of high quality, safe, secure family-sized council homes in our communities. We campaign together for high quality, 3, 4, 5 bed council homes we need!
All this situation is affecting us physically and psychologically. It impacts on our education, work, welfare and health. We have asked to the Council to move back to Southwark, but instead of helping us to move back, they offer us a house at Birmingham.
I am the main carer for my parents, who are in their late seventies, they do not speak English and live in Southwark. My mum has high blood pressure and mild dementia. My dad cannot walk too much as he has problems on his knees. They have been in trouble many times because my mum at middle of the night feels bad and needs to go to hospital, they have to wait for me at least one hour.
Taking to our daughters to school is a big deal, we take the bus because we do not have enough money to take the train. They have to wake up early and leave the house early. Usually, there are not seats available in the bus. This is a long journey and they want a seat because they want to sleep. They arrive tired to school. Many times they want to go to the toilet, we have to get off from the bus in any place. Sometimes, there is traffic. We frequently arrive late at school, at least 2 or 3 times per week.
Last Thursday, over 50 HASL members occupied Southwark HQ for two hours calling for homeless families to be given: a home close to school.
Homeless families in Southwark and across London are being housed in temporary accommodation further and further away from their schools, communities, and work places. This is having a hugely negative impact on our daily lives. Children are sick on the long bus journeys to and from school. They fall asleep in school because they are so tired from the journey. Their education and welfare is suffering. GCSEs are stressful enough without adding 4 hour+ bus travel each day. Parents are tired from the school run and from long commutes to work. They don’t have as much time and energy to spend with their family. Parents have had to reduce their work or change work. Parents’ immigration status can be affected if they cannot work enough hours. Temporary accommodation a long way from our home boroughs can impact every aspect of our lives.
Whilst our members are forced to endure these long journeys to school, homes on the Aylesbury estate in Walworth lie empty. We were at the town hall in support of 4 HASL families who are housed on the outskirts of London and whose children are currently studying for their GCSEs. The families also have other urgent circumstances which mean they need to be housed close to their former homes and communities. They are asking to be housed in temporary accommodation on the Aylesbury estate which is close to their secondary schools. This was the demand we made to Southwark and that the families made directly to Michael Scorer, the Strategic Director for Housing and Modernisation, when he came to speak to us.
Southwark council’s own temporary accommodation policy says that families with children studying for crucial exams like GCSEs should be given priority for re-housing in the borough. So we wanted to know why they have not been following their own policy.
It was our biggest and loudest protest to date and the energy and determination of the group was inspiring! For the whole time, we made noise and chanted so that Southwark council could not ignore us. Our members made a line across the hall forming a blockade. Eventually, Michael Scorer, came down to speak to us. Our members made him give them his word that he would support their cases. He promised to look into the cases and give a response as soon as he could the following week. The families are anxiously waiting to hear from him about their cases.
Everyone in our protest had direct experience of living in temporary accommodation or living in overcrowded private rented housing. Everyone understood and felt the very real suffering of bad housing. They came out to support other members of the group and show such strong solidarity.
HASL children and young people played a strong and vital role in the protest speaking about the stress and exhaustion they face studying for GCSEs and spending so much time travelling to and from school. One child made her own placard about the eviction attempt her family had faced and the long journey she has every day to school.
Our demand to the council to be housed in empty flats on the Aylesbury estate, close to school, is fair and practical – we are after all just asking them to follow their own policy as well as homelessness law. Why force people to travel miles where there are empty flats available?
The situation for homeless families in temporary accommodation is getting worse. Due to a lack of council housing, (as a result of disastrous national policies as well as in part due to Southwark council’s sell-off and demolition of council homes), there are not enough 3, 4, 5 bedroom council homes on the housing waiting list so our members are stuck in unsuitable temporary accommodation for years. This cannot continue! Southwark council must house families in their home borough such as on the empty homes on the Aylesbury estate. We need 3, 4, 5 bedroom council homes now!
Last Monday, we supported one of our members to stop the eviction of her and her daughter from temporary accommodation provided by Southwark council. By emailing and tweeting Southwark councillor Stephanie Cryan and the manager for housing, we were able to get Southwark to stop the eviction.
You can read our tweets here and thanks to everyone for the retweets and tweets in support as it makes such a difference (please keep on following our social media and sign up to our email alerts for future online support).
D and her daughter had only been given a weeks notice from the council that they would be evicted. Due to this short notice, they had not been able to get an appointment at the Citizens Advice Bureau. The eviction was due to rent arrears caused by problems with Universal Credit. D had been in touch previously with the council and they were aware that she had taken steps to deal with the arrears. D is a single parent who does not speak English as her first language. So why were the council being so quick to evict her?
This attempted eviction is not a one-off case. Threats of eviction from temporary accommodation due to rent arrears has become a familiar problem in our group. We have supported 5 other members with this problem this year. There must be many more people who our group has not met who are affected by this problem. One of these families was forced to leave her home but was re-housed the same day after we supported her at the housing office – during the move from one temporary accommodation to the other, her 3 year old daughter broke her leg. Homeless households are already a vulnerable group. Why are Southwark council being so quick to evict them?
Problems with universal credit, low paid and insecure work, and high temporary accommodation rents all mean that it is very easy to fall into rent arrears. Instead of evicting people, homeless households need support to deal with these problems. No one should be evicted from temporary accommodation.
As well as being wrong, we think that some of these eviction threats by Southwark council may be unlawful as the council have told families in temporary accommodation flats that they must leave, but the council have not got a court order which can be required for some types of temporary accommodation.
We are calling on Southwark council to stop all evictions from temporary accommodation and give support to homeless households who are in rent arrears. Homeless families need secure, quality, council homes not evictions!
Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth wish to express our support and solidarity with the tenants of the Ledbury Estate. (We’re sorry not to have done so sooner – as a group made up of homeless and poorly housed people, often just running our group means that we are at our maximum capacity.)
Shortly after the Grenfell tower tragedy, Ledbury residents were informed by their landlord, Southwark council, that their tower blocks were unsafe (although the tenants had been raising concerns about the disrepair of their homes before this). In fact, they were death traps. Since August this year, Ledbury residents have had their gas turned off and many residents have moved into temporary accommodation. Those that have remained in their homes are living without gas making daily living very difficult.
Many of HASL’s members are people who are dealing with homelessness and poor quality private housing. We often find ourselves challenging Southwark council over their poor treatment of us. The neglect, disrespect and contempt that the council shows towards homeless and poorly housed people also extends to their own tenants as the Ledbury tenants have highlighted themselves. The Ledbury tenants have raised poor communication by the council and the council’s failure to meet the simple and basic demands of people directly affected. We know this (mis)treatment very well.
As many of our members struggle for the secure council housing they need, the Ledbury tenants are having to deal with Southwark’s long term neglect of this vital housing stock. We support the Ledbury tenants campaign for their rights for safe and secure homes and to be treated with respect.
Why was Southwark council not taking action on fire safety in 2009?
But the current crisis on the Ledbury Estate should never have been left this long. It was only the fire safety inspections after Grenfell that the structural problems were discovered. However, there had already been a deadly fire at Lakanal Tower in Camberwell in 2009. Southwark council should have been leading the improvement in the safety of their council housing since then – their failure to do so left hundreds of families in danger.
Instead of inspecting and improving fire safety on their estates, Southwark council has been busy demolishing thousands of council homes. And it is this demolition of council homes by Southwark that is making the Ledbury crisis even worse for everyone involved. The Ledbury residents will be having to wait longer for re-housing into council stock and HASL members, and other homeless Southwark residents, will be pushed even further down an ever lengthening queue for council housing.
Unsuitable temporary accommodation
Ledbury residents have also highlighted the unsuitable temporary accommodation they are being provided with by Southwark council. Again, this is a huge issue that we face in our group and have also highlighted and taken action on. Southwark council is currently the worst council in the country for keeping families in B&Bs for over the 6 week legal limit and they have almost quadrupled the amount of homeless households they are housing outside the borough in the last 3 years. Southwark council need to drastically improve this appalling record – homeless households must be given suitable and local temporary accommodation.
Ledbury residents’ demands for basic amenities and respect
The Ledbury Action Group has organised a number of protests with a list of the problems still faced by the residents months after the council realised the seriousness of the housing conditions. We fully support the residents’ basic demands for decent living conditions and respect.
We have two further, simple suggestions for Southwark council:
Stop decanting Aylesbury estate council tenants now! If estate clearance is stopped it will relieve pressure on the council waiting list immediately.
Re-furbish all empty council stock. The Aylesbury Estate has hundreds of empty flats on it which they are currently pulling down. There are still hundreds of flats that have only had minor damage (done by Southwark council to make it uninhabitable for squatters) and they should be urgently made liveable again providing local housing for those on the council’s waiting list.
Housing in Southwark and London is in crisis with people stuck in in poor quality, expensive private housing or neglected council housing. It is important to hold Southwark council accountable for their role in this crisis. We all deserve answers about why Southwark council does not respond to the concerns of their residents (be they homeless people, private tenants, or council tenants), why fire safety checks were not done sooner, and why good quality council estates, like the Aylesbury, are being demolished, against their residents wishes.
Follow Ledbury Action Group’s website here for updates and actions
Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth 