Shame on Waltham Forest council – stop forcing Londoners to Stoke!

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:

Metro (Family evicted from London home for not going to house viewing 180 miles away)

The Mirror (Mum-of-three handed eviction notice after failing to attend flat viewing 200 miles away) – though not to be confused with this Mirror article about another family that Waltham Forest are also trying to force to Stoke at the same time!

Inside Housing (Council evicts family from temporary accommodation for failing to attend viewing 180 miles away)

MyLondon (Mum and 3 kids ‘facing eviction’ from home after missing flat viewing over 140 miles away)

East London Guardian (Waltham Forest Council slammed for family’s eviction threat and Family offered house 150 miles away face homelessness again) – they also covered how another family was facing this same cruel treatment. We send our full solidarity to Nadia and all homeless households facing this appalling treatment.

Too Long in Temporary! Janeth’s family

 

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!

Protest for a Home Close to School

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!

 

Southwark Council – No more evictions from temporary accommodation

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!

Solidarity with Ledbury estate tenants from HASL!

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:

1. Stop decanting Aylesbury estate council tenants now! If estate clearance is stopped it will relieve pressure on the council waiting list immediately.
2. 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

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.