Category Archives: class

Don’t make our babies homeless!

Carpenters Estate, class, event, Focus E15 Campaign, gender, housing crisis, Newham council, public action

Public meeting happening  on Saturday 3rd February

Carpenters and Docklands Centre, 98 Gibbins Rd, E15, Stratford, 2.30pm

The number of children living in temporary accommodation in Britain has been steadily increasing since 2011, from 80,000, to an estimated 128,000 by December 2017. In England alone, at the end of 2017, 85,000 children, of which about 26,000 were under-fives, were stuck in temporary accommodation. Tower Hamlets had the highest number of under-fives in temporary accommodation last year, followed by Newham. This instability is damaging our children’s physical and mental health.

Come to our public meeting to have your say, discuss and debate these issues, educate ourselves, agitate in our communities, schools, workplaces, and organise to hold our local councils to account. Homeless children? NO WAY!
Speakers: Focus E15 campaign, Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!, Kate Belgrave (journalist and blogger), The Magpie Project, the Housing and Mental Health Network.

 Sara and her children must stay in Newham!

class, eviction resistance, Focus E15 Campaign, gender, housing crisis, mothers, Newham council, private landlords, public action, social cleansing, street stall, women

No eviction on  Monday 11 December! 

Sara is the mother of two children, forced to move out of where she was living when her second child was born, due to overcrowding. She was given emergency accommodation by Newham Labour council, in Brimstone House in Stratford. That was six months ago.

In the last two weeks, Newham council offered Sara and her children a property to consider in Birmingham…. She was scared and she was brave …. all her family, support networks, and her oldest child’s education, is in Newham… so she said no. She explains to Focus E15 campaign that she is facing eviction from Brimstone House on Monday 11 December. Sara says that Newham council is:

 ‘asking me to leave the property because I rejected what they call a suitable offer and they are discharging their duty of care to me. I have lived in this borough for 12 years and all my local connections are in Newham as my family is the only support system I have.’

Followers of Focus E15 campaign will see an irony here…. Brimstone House is what was formerly Focus E15 hostel for young people and where the Mother and Baby Unit was based and it was the young single mothers living there in 2013 who stood together to say no to Newham council who told them to pack their bags and move to  Manchester, Hastings and yes… Birmingham. That is what launched the campaign against social cleansing and exposed Newham’s rotten record of sending people out of borough and out of London. 

Four years on, the council behaviour hasn’t changed and we will stand with Sara and her children to prevent their social cleansing, to prevent their eviction and to demand that they be housed in Newham, in accommodation suitable for them as a family.

20 years ago, in 1997, Labour Mayor Robin Wales made his priorities clear when he was leader of the council and said:

‘There are too many people, those currently living in Newham and those attracted from other London boroughs, who survive on low incomes or who present themselves as homeless. Whilst we will offer support and carry out our legislative duties, our aim will be to increase Newham’s property values, and raise the income profile of all our residents’.

Within Newham Labour Council, 46 councillors own or control almost 100 properties and one has 19 properties with combined estimated value of over £4.5m and collective monthly rent of over £20,000.  When the young mothers from Focus E15 hostel challenged Robin Wales in 2013, he had the arrogance to say: ‘If you can’t afford to live in Newham, you can’t afford to live in Newham’. How can such people represent our interests?

Recent vital research by Debt Resistance UK  has shown that Newham now has 12,000 homeless people, one in every 25 residents,  the highest number in England. Newham also has the highest number of residents in temporary accommodation in London, and is among the councils moving the highest number of people out-of-borough and indeed out of London altogether. 

Despite housing being a top priority for Newham residents, the council is spending significantly less money on housing than it is on debt repayments to banks for dodgy loans, known as Lender Option Borrower Option loans (LOBO). These are short-term, variable rate loans taken out by councils from the banks (when they should have secured safer fixed-rate 50-year loans from central government). Between 2001 and 2010, Newham took out £563m worth of loans from Barclays Bank and RBS. The teaser interest rates started low but continue to escalate and Newham is now paying  back 7.5% interest on these loans.  Interest repayments increased from £54m (2010) to £83m 2017. The upshot of this scandalous financial wrongdoing is that in 2015, Newham paid the equivalent of 70% of its council tax as debt servicing and in 2016/17, this has risen to 125% – the highest in England – meaning that more than all of what comes in as council tax payments, goes straight out to the banks. 

Whilst cutting services to residents and pleading ‘Tory austerity’, Newham Labour council has sat on an ever-growing pot of money: ‘usable reserves’ increased from £77m in 2010 to £434m currently, a staggering rise of 560%. 

If you sickened by any of this, come to our campaign stall and meeting on Saturday 9 December. Join us in our demand that Sara and her children must stay in Newham!

No more evictions! No social cleansing! 

The campaign stall runs from 12-2pm on the Broadway in Stratford, outside Wilkos.

The campaign meeting is at Sylvia’s Corner on Aldworth Road, Stratford, E15 4DN at 2.30pm

Threatened with eviction when grieving: housing association turns its back on tenants

class, eviction resistance, housing association, housing crisis, personal story

East Thames Housing Association in the limelight again….
Every week on the street stall Focus E15 campaigners meet people in housing need. We have recently met residents of  East Thames Housing association who are worried about being evicted. Focus E15 campaign have had extensive dealings with this housing association in the past because it was East Thames that wanted to evict young mothers,  when Newham council cut funding to the mother and baby unit in an East Thames managed hostel. These bullying and vicious threats  gave rise to the Focus E15 campaign  in 2013.

In December 2016, East Thames Housing Association joined forces with London&Quadrant Housing Association. Together they manage over 90,000 homes across Britain and pledge to build 100,000 new homes, 50% of which will be ‘affordable’ (we all know that that means 80% of market rent and this is not affordable). Their website states that they ‘combine [their] social purpose and commercial drive, investing all profits back into creating homes and neighbourhoods people can be proud of’. When you read the story below you are left to wonder what  their social purpose is and whose interests are being represented.

close up etha
Please read the story below which shows how East Thames Housing Association tenants are  treated. Be ready to join us in the coming weeks to challenge East Thames in their shocking treatment of this grieving family.

East Thames tenants speak out

‘We have lived at our East Thames home for over 20 years. Sadly, our dad, the sole tenant, passed away before the summer unexpectedly. In the aftermath of his death we have gone through the correct channels and reported the sad news to East Thames.

We applied for succession of the tenancy but this has been declined due to their policy.

It has taken East Thames over four months to tell us something that is policy. We now have 28 days to pack up over 20 years of memories, forcing us to deal with our father’s belongings whilst we are still grieving.

Receiving this result from the housing association felt like a kick in the teeth especially for our parents who are both deceased. They have been London&Quadrant and East Thames tenants since 1982. All parents work hard to keep a safe place for their children growing up and in their absence hope the family home can remain.

East Thames did not present us with any other alternatives for housing just the news that we must vacate.’

Focus E15 campaign believes that these tenants must stay in their long term family home! There is no need for the housing association to evict them. Join with us on the Focus E15 campaign street stall every Saturday from 12-2pm on the Broadway in Stratford, outside Wilkos to discuss this case and make further plans for action.