Housing: how many have to be unable to afford it before it becomes a political problem?

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/26/housing-east-london-estate-viability-affordability

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“Why should we be pushed out of the area because it’s become all gentrified and trendy?” asked Lindsey Garrett. At 11am on Thursday, the Focus E15 mothers occupying an empty flat on the Carpenters estate in Newham, east London, had a solidarity visit from Garrett and two others, from another protest group, New Era 4 All. A cosy, carpeted, nicely proportioned council flat, still at this point with running water, thronged with people.

Their issues aren’t identical: at the forefront of Focus E15 are Sam Middleton and Jasmine Stone, young mothers who, a year ago, were living in a Newham hostel. The funding stream was cut, and, Middleton, 20, recalled, “we all got eviction notices, none of us even knew why. Bear in mind, I was heavily pregnant at the time.”

The 29 young mothers evicted from the hostel are protesting on the estate, next to the Olympic village, which was long ago cleared of most residents as Newham tried to sell the land. The last deal fell through, leaving about 600 council homes empty. The council wanted to send the families to Birmingham or Manchester where rents are cheaper.

Garrett, with Danielle Molinari and Jo Dorking, meanwhile, live in social housing in Hoxton that has just been bought by a consortium part-owned by Conservative MP Richard Benyon: rents are expected to go up to market rates of £400-£600 a week. Dorking said: “Lindsey works for the NHS. She’s got a degree, she’s running about looking after people all day long. These flats will be completely unaffordable for her.”

So it’s a constellation: social housing being bought out by private developers, councils trying to divest themselves of what sparse stock they have left, “affordability” criteria bearing no relation to actual affordability, wages that don’t even cover social rents, thousands of homes empty in preparation for the billions their destruction will bring in. It’s pretty plain to everyone except council officials that what looks like a heap of problems is actually one: housing is too expensive. If you try to shoo people from each area as they are priced out by rents, at some point they’re going to mind.

Earlier in the week, an intervention from local councillor Andrew Baikie had blamed the Carpenters estate action on “agitators and hangers-on”, and said: “The Carpenters estate is simply not viable.” Kate Belgrave, who has been involved with the campaign for a year, said: “I’m quite surprised myself how dismissive the council has been. Some of the correspondence I have had with the council has been poisonous.”

The laziness of the council’s argument is pretty impressive. On the point about whether the estate is “viable”: if the alternative is the land beneath it on the open market, for a private developer to pay bubble prices, then nothing is really viable. London zoo isn’t viable. Buckingham Palace isn’t viable. How do you compete with endless money? In real life, though, of course it’s viable to renovate the estate. Anything can be renovated; plus, it’s really nice, better than any private rental that any of the women had seen, even after four years of standing empty.

It was never the group’s intention to live there forever: they are using it as an open space to discuss the housing crisis. Sarah Kwei, 26, who comes in to the flat every day and lives nearby, said: “People come in to talk about the bedroom tax, they come in to talk about being evicted, they’ve all said, ‘I haven’t even told anybody I have to move out.’ This space has taken away people’s shame.” Is she an agitator or a hanger-on? For that matter, which am I? It is preposterous for Baikie to suggest the Focus women aren’t authentic, and that people aren’t being evicted in Newham.

Yet, undeniably, there were more people here than the imminently homeless, and the purpose was a larger conversation: how many people have to be unable to afford to live before it becomes a political problem, not an individual’s hard luck? What’s your plan, Establishment? This is agitation. “I’m pretty sure the Labour party would have been called agitators in their day,” Kwei noted.

At 11.30am, in a cloud of outrageous charisma and Londis bags full of snacks, Russell Brand arrived. He made a little video of everyone. Nobody could stop smiling. “They don’t want people taking over their campaign,” he said, anxious not to look as though he had swooped down as their political messiah. “It’s just to get all these groups and bring them together, because there are so many of them.” This was a very surreal atmosphere, a simultaneous bubbling over of anger and optimism. It looked a bit like an advert. “If Carling made protests...”

On Friday, things took a darker turn. In the morning, the council turned the water off, except, because water isn’t really their department, they just mashed up the pipes. One housing officer had been round before, with two police officers, “But he just told us what we’re doing was illegal,” Middleton said. “I was thinking; do you know what? I think what you’re doing is illegal.” Thames Water came round later and said the council had done permanent damage.

At 12, Focus E15 were served with a notice to appear in Bow magistrates court at 2pm. Around 30 people massed outside the court, chanting,: “Housing is a human right, here to stay and here to fight, they are wrong and we are right, housing is a human right.”

A barrister, Lindsey Johnson, found at the last minute, successfully argued that two hours’ notice was unjust, and the judge agreed, ruling that a hearing could be heard in no sooner than three days. “We know they’ll get us out eventually, but this buys us time,” Kwei said. Nobody was too dispirited by the court process: fundamentally, this one flat isn’t the point. The estate isn’t even the point, although when Middleton pointed to the board-up doors and said: “Imagine these houses with families in; imagine if this was a community again,” it is freighted with emotion. “Social housing, not social cleansing” is the slogan: “They still want us to commute in to service them,” Stone said. “But from how far?”

The sheer magnitude of the problem gives everybody a sense of possibility. “I’m an optimist, anyway,” said Garratt, from the New Era estate. “In my head, they’re going and we’re staying.”

Additional reporting by Frances Perraudin