On Thursday 5 February, Focus E15 campaigners attended a housing meeting at City Hall. It was called ‘Regeneration or Displacement – Fighting London’s profit-driven estate demolition and gentrification’. It was organised by Zoë Garbett of the Green Party, as part of her work on the housing committee of the Greater London Assembly.

Zoe Garbett introduced the event and there were excellent speakers from three of the many housing campaigns present.

Andrea Gilbert from the Lesnes Estate in Thamesmead spoke of the need for collective action against demolition, to challenge the narrative, to tell our stories and not allow anything to happen quietly. She said ‘demolition is a political choice, not an inevitability.’

After she had finished, Imogen Tranchell from Friends of Shepherd’s Bush market spoke of the disgrace that councils leaders meet with developers but not with residents. She said we are witnessing the ‘corporate capture of democracy’. Andrea concluded that ‘housing is linked to everything and everything is linked to housing’.

Then Joseph Jones, from The London Tenants Federation (LTF), which has been part of the team setting up Estate Watch, spoke of the need to include the voice of tenants and that we must plan and organise together. He told us that housing is becoming unavailable to many in the city including the working class, people of colour and migrants. Jones was clear that both the Tories and Labour Party are part of a system that is destroying council housing. This is having severe impact on people’s health.

He finished with a very important question to the organisers of the meeting…. will the Green Party stay in touch and work to resolve these issue. We have published his speech in full below with his permission.

At the end of the meeting, Focus E15 campaign responded to a question about whether the London Mayor will protect communities by talking about the horrors of the Labour government at home and abroad. While this government continues to arm and fund the genocidal settler state of Israel to carry out the slaughter, land theft and home demolition in Gaza, there can be no guarantee that anyone is safe here.

Solidarity with all those fighting back for housing justice. Together we can win.

Educate! Agitate! Organise!
Fight this racist, capitalist, imperialist system.
Time to build a better world for everyone.

Joseph Jones from The London Tenants Federation speech to housing meeting at City Hall

We are a grass roots led organisation

• We support tenants with their rights to secure, safe, well-maintained homes
• We provide training, resources and information so tenants are empowered to question landlords from a position of knowledge or power and in 2020, in partnership with Just Space and academics, set up Estate Watch which provides detailed evidence since 1997 of the displacement of London council tenants and leaseholders through so called regeneration schemes.

One of the key tenets of LTF has been “a voice at the table for tenants
where decisions are made.”

The land our homes and communities live on, are now perceived as assets too valuable for us to live there. As Focus E15, the Aylesbury estate tenants, the Heygate estate tenants, and those who have experience of regeneration know; developers, big business, most political parties, the Mayor and our councils want us out. Rent rises in the form of service charges, rent increases called Rent Convergence and the Regeneration of estates, are all making London unaffordable for the working class, working poor, non-white and recently arrived people from former British controlled countries.

We need to stop this social cleansing from continuing.

There are a couple of things we need to do:

1. We have to plan, to organise, to get heard and taken seriously.
2. Support – we can’t do this alone. We don’t get heard without support from our neighbours, friends and like-minded organisations.

Council estates were the government answer to the terrible housing that the working class had to call home. There was a realisation that working class people needed decent modern homes. These were govt funded, council built homes. They were ambitious and experimental and in the main decent affordable well built homes. The Tory govt of the 80s and 90s changed this. They sold off council homes under the Right to Buy, encouraged HA’s to take over council housing stock and begun the introduction of the private market into council housing. New Labour in the 90s and 00s made matters worse with ALMOs and public private partnership
Then in 2010 came austerity, where money has been cut from housing, education, health, legal aid, disability services,…

Cross Subsidy Housing is not working, yet the latest govt initiative is to continue down this route.The building sector has approval to build multiple homes in London. They won’t build because the conditions to maximise their profits are not there. they don’t build for the need, they build for their greed.

So, when the current govt says what’s stopping you building they say: regulations relax regs and we’ll be able to build.
Regs = less profit.

Are the builders even building what Londoners need? They’re building luxury apartments 1&2 bed where we need more 3,4&5 bed homes. The Mayor knows this. There is this thing called the Strategic Housing Market Assessment which tells the Mayor what homes London needs and what is currently being built. The investment in cross subsidy housing isn’t building what we need. It is building what is profitable to the market. Our homes are now assets to be financialised. If that means moving us out so be it.

Haringey housing activist Paul Burnham has been researching how the stress of regeneration means people die sooner than should be the case.This winter, millions of households are forced to choose between heating and eating. People are made ill by damp and mould, or live in constant fear of rising rents or threats of eviction.

Housing injustice is making us sick.

Will the Greens do something other political parties will no longer do. Will they not just take away our ideas?
Will you work with us? Will you stay in touch and will provide support other than words?