"These people need homes. These homes need people."
September 27, 2014 4:27 AM   Subscribe

"We were homeless; that’s why we were in the hostel in the first place. We didn’t have anywhere else to go. There were 210 other young women living there. Now it’s luxury flats."
A group of young, homeless mothers have taken over an empty council house in Newham, East London, in protest over the council's plans to rehome them to other parts of the country while selling off social housing and closing the specialist hostel where they were living. The Guardian reports: "For real politics, don't look to Parliament but to an empty London housing estate."

More links on Focus E15 Mothers:
Focus E15 Mothers on Facebook
One first-hand account
More details and photos in the Evening Standard

Housing issues in London previously on Metafilter; previouslier; previousliest
posted by Catseye (13 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
One of these days someone is going to add "dispossessed working/unemployed class" and "unoccupied housing owned by absentee Russian/Chinese oligarchs" together and the sum will be very interesting to watch.
posted by Captain l'escalier at 5:58 AM on September 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


This article documents serious abuses of the legal position by the council - who in my opinion clearly hoped to get away with acting illegally assuming their tenants did not have access to good legal advice (the government has gutted access to high quality free legal advice so this is not an idle guess).

That said, they clearly do have that access, and have succeeded in using it - which the article fails to make clear.

If you are an unemployed single mother with a young (aged 5-14) child in Newham you can claim just under £300 a week in Housing benefit and about £90-100 a week in other benefits (depending on council tax support). That is over £20,000/Year from the state, making you in the richest 9% of the world - earning 12.3X the global average wage, without reference to your husbands child support payments or having any employment. You also are entitled to free education and healthcare services from the taxpayer. Further more, the council has a statutory obligation to house you in accommodation suitable to your needs and within their housing area.

None of that is disputed in the article - indeed it is very clear that the tenants in question have been successful claiming these benefits for some time. So where is the problem? Well its clear that 1. they were treated in a way by the council that hoped they would not get good legal advice. 2. they are upset that they can't stay in their council properties 3. Being unemployed in london, even if great by global standards - still sucks.

Which is not to say that these mothers don't have a point or should not expect better treatment from the council. I have been unemployed in London before and it sucks, it must be even worse as a single mother. But the system has worked in their case, they are in suitable accommodation, they have not left the area, they are getting the support they are entitled too from the state. What the author calls "grim conditions" is frankly the reality of renting in London - a city that has a vermin and housing regulation compliance problems - those issues are faced by private renters every day and are caused by systematic failure to enforce regulations, and complex shared housing rules not some new policy or practise. Every injustice they have suffered seems to has been the result of the incompetence of the labour run council, not central government. That disappoints me but does not surprise me.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 7:01 AM on September 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


During the Olympics, Wales’s officers rented out the tower blocks as filming locations to the BBC and Al-Jazeera; they allowed Gillette to hang a giant advertising banner from another. But the idea of using them as long-term housing for the local homeless is apparently a no-no.

It's quite clear that although there's probably not a concerted plan to get rid of the poor, it's become an underlying principle for the rich that the poor are inconvenient. Money talks and let's not worry about the actual people and the lives they are trying to live. I hope they get more people living there and it becomes a London Christiania.
posted by arcticseal at 7:19 AM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Russell Brand (in his first on-the-street posting of The Trews) has met with and interviewed some of the women: here, here.
posted by anothermug at 7:39 AM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


"rehome"? like they were cats and dogs?
posted by bruce at 7:56 AM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Well, honestly Bruce...animals, poor people....messy inconvenient things, what? Best to send them somewhere the wealthy don't have to see their little wretched faces. Are there no workhouses, no prisons? /1%
posted by dejah420 at 8:41 AM on September 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


What the author calls "grim conditions" is frankly the reality of renting in London - a city that has a vermin and housing regulation compliance problems - those issues are faced by private renters every day and are caused by systematic failure to enforce regulations, and complex shared housing rules not some new policy or practise. Every injustice they have suffered seems to has been the result of the incompetence of the labour run council, not central government.

Right to Buy, a systematic degradation of social housing stock throughout the country, is a central government policy, and is more to blame for the problems faced by London renters than any other issue. It is both the largest privatisation in UK history and the biggest giveaway of national assets. It's a policy that has been promoted by both Tory and Labour governments. Less party political oneupmanship and more recognition that we're in a housing crisis would be useful.

For a bit more on the legal aspects of this, Nearly Legal has a piece.
posted by howfar at 9:32 AM on September 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


If you are an unemployed single mother with a young (aged 5-14) child in Newham you can claim just under £300 a week in Housing benefit and about £90-100 a week in other benefits (depending on council tax support).

This is incorrect. It's a maximum of ​£220.75 per week for a two-bedroom property for LHA. The average rent for a 2-bedroom flat in Newham is £1,497. Even if you can find an affordable flat, 60% of landlords refuse to rent to tenants receiving LHA, and say so in their ads because this is perfectly legal.

But the system has worked in their case, they are in suitable accommodation, they have not left the area, they are getting the support they are entitled too from the state.

They are not in suitable accommodation; they are split between a hostel for homeless families and sub-standard housing. The only reason they have not been relocated to fucking Manchester is because they staged a civic protest. And the support they are entitled to has been cut by £49 per month. These are not the hallmarks of a well-functioning system.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:52 AM on September 27, 2014 [11 favorites]


I am a labour voter living in London and never suggested housing in central London was not ludicrously expensive. But the idea thatLocal Housing Allowance would simply not meet the rents demanded, particularly with the benefit cap in operation. Is simply not true, go queue up at a london housing benefit office, there are so many problems with that system but it does track the low end of the market well. If landlords will take you (illegal discrimination against HB tenants being one of those bigger issues) you can find private accommodation. The article you linked too does highlight the totally unacceptable way which councils treat claimant tenants and I tried to mention that, but it can't be understated.; to
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 10:09 AM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory: It seems to me that you're saying the system does work if one engages in the bureaucracies properly.

The articles seem to suggest that the system did not work for these women who did try to engage the bureaucracy, and that the only reason they are in a satisfactory position now is because of illegal actions they took (in response to the seemingly illegal actions of their local government).

There seems to be a conflict between these two statements "60% of landlords refuse to rent to tenants receiving LHA, and say so in their ads because this is perfectly legal" and "illegal discrimination against HB tenants being one of those bigger issues"; but I don't know the distinction between LHA and HB.
posted by el io at 10:20 AM on September 27, 2014


LHA is just a way of calculating maximum HB for tenants in the private rented sector. It is meant to be set at the 30th percentile of a list of rents in the 'broad rental market area', but it does not exclude very high price luxury properties, so it is problematic in some areas, particularly London.

It is not unlawful to refuse to accept tenants on HB. Poverty and joblessness are not protected characteristics.
posted by howfar at 10:29 AM on September 27, 2014


But you don't have to declare you are accepting housing benefits and the council should not tell a landlord you are without your consent - sorry this is an interesting conversation but I can't give full replies at the moment
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 10:45 AM on September 27, 2014


Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory, you're skipping over the fact that this isn't the same broad problem shared by low-income people across London; it's a specific Newham problem. Statement from Aston-Mansfield:

Waiting lists for social housing in Newham are far larger than in any other borough. According to Shelter’s Local Housing Watch data, it would take Newham almost 40 years to clear its waiting list at current rates of construction. This is not only because it has the highest proportion of households on waiting lists, but also because its rate of letting to new social tenants is so low

I'm not really sure why we're laying our credentials down in this debate, but for the record, I'm a former Labour voter and a former Newham resident. We left Newham 10 years ago. It was the last London borough we could afford to live in. We loved the fact that our neighbours spoke 81 languages and that we were minority whites in the most ethnically diverse borough in England.

We got gentrified out, hastened by the Olympics being built at the end of our street. The social housing that was supposed to arise from that construction project was eaten by Boris Johnson, and the mess in Newham today is in large part the aftermath of that lie.
posted by DarlingBri at 3:56 PM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


« Older "Conceptual fiction plays with our conception of...   |   Portland, Portlandia, and Whiteness Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments