The latest government figures show that 51,940 households in London, containing more than 90,000 children, are in temporary accommodation –a rise of 8% since this time last year. What the statistics do not show is the increasingly appalling reality of such accommodation, as councils farm out their housing responsibilities to unscrupulous private landlords, often outside London. The vast majority of households accepted by local authorities as homeless are single mothers and pregnant women. Guidelines state that no-one should be in temporary accommodation for more than six months, yet in London more than half of households remain there for up to two years; some for even longer. The Focus E15 campaign has been exposing the role of Waltham Forest and Newham Labour councils in east London in decanting homeless families to wholly unsuitable accommodation that is unsafe, overcrowded and far from extended family, jobs and support networks.
Boundary House is a particularly squalid block of bedsits in Welwyn Garden City, some distance from London, used as a dumping ground by Waltham Forest and Newham councils. It was never designed to house families. The single rooms are covered in mould, there are cockroaches, in some flats the heating is broken, water pumps break down and many of the electric appliances are faulty and dangerous. The block has no lift, leaving the mothers lugging heavy baby buggies up and down three flights of stairs. Boundary House is 40 minutes from the nearest train station and the journey back into London is long and expensive. When some of the working mothers complained to Waltham Forest council, they were told simply to quit their jobs. Another woman had her benefits sanctioned because she couldn’t get to the jobcentre in Walthamstow in time.
At the end of June, the Focus E15, campaign along with the RCG and other organisations, protested with the mothers and their children at Waltham Forest housing office. The demand was a simple one: safe homes for our children, decent homes for all! Despite the efforts of security officers to keep us out, we insisted on seeing the Director of Housing, John Knight, and exacted promises to raise the issues with Theori, the private company that runs Boundary House on behalf of the council. This was after he had arrogantly asserted that people would have to put up with ‘a degree of overcrowding’ – despite the fact that levels of overcrowding for many of these households breach statutory regulations. When residents followed Knight up four weeks later, he could only offer weak promises that living conditions would be improved, with no penalties on Theori and a refusal to move the households back to Waltham Forest. So we will be back.
Newham Council has placed 15 homeless families in Boundary House over the last three years. Elina and her three young children were housed there in 2014. She became a main organiser of protests to expose the truth about the conditions there. Eventually, she and the other Newham households forced the council to rehouse some of them in the borough – but to punitively worse conditions. Mansa, who was placed in a single room in Boundary House with her three-year-old, now also has a very young baby. Newham has rehoused the family in a grim single room off an alley. Hidden behind the wooden street door are two such rooms, both housing young families. There is no natural light, as the one small window has thick reinforced glass and only opens at the top. The single room contains only a double bunkbed and a galley kitchen with a cooker that does not work. In one corner is a screened off bathroom with a toilet, shower and basin. When it rains, the front door leaks. The council pays out £1,000 a month for this hovel, which is one of eight in the building; three house former residents of Boundary House. All contain at least one child. The private landlord is guaranteed at least £8,000 a month from renting out these slums to Newham Council. This is the borough that has trumpeted its campaign to crack down on ‘slum landlords’ who rent substandard properties to multiple tenants. Meanwhile just down the road at the council-owned Carpenters Estate, hundreds of family-sized flats and houses remain boarded up and empty. We repeat: those homes need people and these people need homes! Repopulate the Carpenters Estate!
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 252 August/September 2016
