Homeless families occupy council housing offices on Halloween in plea to fix ‘houses of horror’

More than 100 activists and homeless families occupied a London council housing office all morning on Halloween in a bid to convince the authority to fix its ‘houses of horror’.

Members of Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) occupied Lewisham Council’s housing office on 31 October in protest at how the authority had handled housing two of its members.

The protesters were angry at a combined total of almost four years that two families spent in hostel accommodation despite a six-week legal limit to the use of hostel accommodation for homeless families.

The group accused Lewisham Council of using a legal loophole to bypass the limit. A council spokesperson said they “completely understand the frustration felt by the residents and their supportive community” and confirmed council officers met with the two families to find suitable accommodation.

The occupation saw children tape up a large cardboard box in the shape of a hostel with tape warning “danger” and “beware” while kids also decorated green cupcakes with slime icing and put on temporary tattoos of spiders and other insects.

Meanwhile, adults carried placards calling for “no more house of horrors” and declared “too long in temporary” and “no more overcrowding” and chanted: “Lewisham Council here us say, homelessness must end today!” 

HASL member Elizabeth Wyatt said: “It’s unbelievable that Lewisham Council is justifying these harmful living conditions. The council has told us that it’s okay for a child to grow up in a grotty, unhygienic and cramped hostel.

“As well as the devastating impact on these families, Lewisham council’s refusal to respect the six-week legal limit for hostel accommodation for families also undermines everyone’s homeless rights. This law is there to provide minimum standards and very basic protections for vulnerable homeless families, but Lewisham Council wants to lower these standards even further. It is a dystopian vision that the council appear to be fighting for.”

The protest centred on two families’ cases.

HASL member Annabel’s two-year-old son has spent his entire life living in a hostel where he doesn’t even have space to play with his toys, the group claimed. 

Annabel said: “As the room is very small, my son gets really stressed and annoyed. He is two years old and he wants to run and I have to keep asking him to stop.

“I try and take him out as much as possible, but the weather means I cannot do this a lot of the time. I cannot get many toys for him to play with, as there just is not the space. I am worried that the lack of space is affecting his development.

“I have been trying to get moved for over two years but it has never felt like the council has listened to me. I think they have just forgotten about me. Not only have they left me here, but they have not even done something simple, like fix the door to my room, which has been broken for four months.

“My son’s second birthday was in the summer, and I wanted him to be able to celebrate with other children from his playgroup, but there just was not the space for us to have a party. It is upsetting not being able to celebrate my son’s birthday because I still do not have normal housing.”

Meanwhile, fellow member Maria successfully challenged the council over her hostel accommodation.

But her family was sent to overcrowded temporary accommodation outside of Lewisham, HASL claimed, disrupting her family.

Maria said: “The last two years of our lives have been so difficult for myself and my daughter, we’ve gone through a lot together after she was the victim of a violent attack after school and we had to flee our home due to threats of violence. We just want to be able to live a normal life, but without secure housing, this is impossible.

“My daughter is suffering from serious mental health issues and our insecure housing conditions have been making the desperate situation even worse for her. Because of Lewisham Council, we’ve been stuck in seriously overcrowded housing for over two years where we do not have any privacy or space from each other. 

“We don’t have a living room, I have to sleep in the living room on a sofa bed, which means that we don’t have any space to relax. I have to tell my daughter to leave the living room so that I can sleep. The conditions are affecting my relationship with my daughter as she is more irritable and stressed because of the lack of space.”

Both families have pursued the legal routes to try to obtain suitable temporary accommodation – and they continue to do so.

HASL wrote to Lewisham Council on 21 October calling for local social housing for both families and requested guarantees that other Lewisham families would not be subjected to the same treatment that both Annabel and Maria have faced.

The council responded insisting that the families’ temporary accommodations are suitable, the group said.

Wyatt added: “Both families need local, social housing to meet their urgent housing needs and to go some way to compensate for the years suffering in hostels and so they can begin to get on with their lives.”

A Lewisham Council spokesperson said: “Like the rest of London, Lewisham is facing a housing crisis and we are seeing more and more people come to us for housing support. We are currently supporting more than 2,900 families and individuals in temporary accommodation, have 11,000 households on our housing register waiting for permanent housing, and we have huge budget challenges. As a local authority, we have a responsibility to ensure that any family facing homelessness is provided with suitable accommodation.

“In each case our officers will work closely with the household to find the best way forward. Yesterday, council officers met with the protesters and offered assessments to both households and will be reviewing both cases based on the information provided.  We completely understand the frustration felt by the residents and their supportive community. Housing families in temporary accommodation for long periods of time is not what we want to be doing but sometimes has to be used as a last resort due to the pressures of lack of supply of good quality homes. We will continue working with the families to find suitable accommodation.”

The occupation comes in a week where London’s homelessness crisis has been in the spotlight.

At an emergency homelessness summit earlier in the week, mayor of London Sadiq Khan apologised to the thousands of children growing up in temporary accommodation after being pressed by the Big Issue.

Meanwhile, record-high quarterly rough sleeping figures showed almost 5,000 people were counted as sleeping on the streets in London between July and September this year.

The government announced £233m extra funding would be dedicated to preventing homelessness and rough sleeping across the country at this week’s autumn budget.

Cross-party group London Councils had warned ahead of the financial statement that councils across the English capital faced a £700m funding gap next year with a homelessness crisis threatening to leave some authorities at risk of bankruptcy.

Councillor Claire Holland, chair of London Councils, said: “We went into this budget warning of a homelessness emergency that is devastating Londoners’ lives and pushing boroughs to the brink of bankruptcy.

“While the budget will help to address some of the immediate pressures we face, the outlook for borough finances remains extremely tough after 14 years of structural underfunding.”

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