Families not assets

As New Era estate’s residents continue their widely supported campaign to save their homes from the hands of profit-hungry private developers, shadow minister for London, Sadiq Khan MP,  held a meeting today (December 12) with the estate’s campaigners.

Commenting after the meeting, Khan condemned a system that enables property developers to run roughshod over working families in the capital.

“These 93 families who will be forced out of their homes are not assets,” he said. “They’re families.

“The struggles New Era’s residents are facing now are a perfect illustration of the struggles of families in London everywhere,” he added.

As UNITElive has reported, the New Era estate, which was built in 1930 to provide affordable housing to local workers in Hoxton, will be transformed into a money-making machine for new owners, the US-based property speculators Westbrook Partners.

After Westbrook potentially refurbishes homes on the estate, tenants will be threatened by potential eviction as current £600 monthly rent prices may  next year sky-rocket to “market rate” rents of £2,400 a month.

Khan said that, beyond supporting campaigns like New Era’s, housing provision in London requires more fundamental, structural change.

“We need to change the way housing works for Londoners, because at the moment, it’s not working,” Kahn argued, promising that an incoming Labour government would commit to various measures to alleviate the housing crisis, including building more council homes and enforcing tighter regulations on letting agencies and landlords.

Residents react

Single mum and New Era resident, Lindsay Garrett, a Unite member, was optimistic after the meeting with Khan, but said that words must be followed by action.

“We appreciate them coming out to support us, and we appreciate their words of support,” she said. “But we’d like to see more being done regarding the current housing crisis.”

“Social housing needs to be built on a major scale, and it needs to happen now,” she added. “We need long-term security, for social tenants particularly, and we need to look at the possibility of rent caps in London.”

Garrett described the anxiety that she and so many of her friends and family living in London suffer, worrying about their future.

“It has a massive psychological effect,” she said. “You wake every day with the constant threat of eviction. You wake up not knowing how you’re going to secure your children’s future in London. It’s a constant worry. It’s a weight on your chest all the time.”

Danielle Molinari, another New Era resident and leading campaigner, explained how the campaign to save the estate has galvanised the residents into collective action.

“This is the first time many people have ever been involved in a campaign like this, and the support and has been massive,” she said, adding that the collective spirit had spread to inspire other housing campaigns across the nation.

“Our campaign has given other people the encouragement to fight their own campaigns,” Molinari said. “They think, ‘Actually, if three women can do this, so can we’.”

“It’s about sticking together and becoming united as one,” she added. “If you have this conquer-and-divide attitude, that’s when everything begins to crumble. You have to keep everyone on side, otherwise your campaign will fail.”

“No one is safe”

Both Molinari and Garrett, although hopeful that their campaign can turn the tide and save New Era tenants from eviction, insisted that only legislation can protect them and their families in the long-term from being priced out of affordable housing in the capital.

“There’s an estate across the road,” Molinari explained.  “Yes, at the moment, it’s council housing. But if the council wants to sell that off, they have at the moment every right to do it. So no one is safe, and that’s the message we’re trying to get across.”

“You need to have legislation in place to secure people’s tenancies,” said Garrett. “They don’t offer you a long-term tenancy anymore. My gran and granddad got their council flat years ago in Hackney, and they lived there fifty odd years before they died. That doesn’t happen anymore.”

Garrett added that the effects of Margaret Thatcher’s housing policies, which depleted social housing stock, benefited the few on the backs of the many.

“All the council housing was used for investment, and at the time people thought it was brilliant, but we—working people—are now having to live with the effects of these policies,” Garret said. “It will be even worse for our children. If we’re struggling now, they won’t have a chance of affordable housing if things don’t change.”

Molinari agreed.

“This campaign is as much about securing a good future for our children as it is about saving our homes,” she said.

Molinari added that protecting their homes was part of a wider struggle to reclaim the capital for working people.

“The thing is, they don’t want the likes of us, working-class people, living in London,” she said. “They don’t want people like us who work a normal job, who work our socks off to provide for our families.”

“They don’t want people who speak up for themselves,”  she added.  “They want yes-sir, no-sir people, and that ain’t us.”