Campaigners to march against housing bill in weekend of protests
Protesters campaign to save social housing at a previous demonstration. Photograph: Dean Ryan / Kill the Housing Bill
Up in arms campaigners plan to voice their discontent over the government’s proposed housing bill with a series of demonstrations this weekend.
A vigil is taking place this evening at 7pm outside Hackney Town Hall, ahead of a march to ‘kill the bill’ on Saturday.
Campaigners are concerned that the new bill will not solve the high cost of housing and will lead to higher rents and house prices.
According to one of the campaign flyers, the proposed bill will lead to empty council houses being sold off, as well as the loss of lifetime tenure and succession rights for children.
Campaigners also warn that the bill will create “unaffordable starter homes instead of social housing” and that “working families will have to pay extra to stay in their council homes”.
Councillor Philip Glanville, Cabinet Member for Hackney Homes and Regeneration Estates, told the Hackney Citizen: “Starter homes won’t offer any solution to the housing crisis. It will fail to get people into home ownership. We are really worried about the impact of the bill.
“I’ve been working with the tenants and campaigners for the last housing march and this one and organising the vigil this evening. We are mutually supporting each other over these key issues in the housing bill and making sure it receives the biggest attention it can.
“The key thing for me is working with tenants to save Hackney social housing – from the sell-off of council homes to the introduction of pay-to-stay, which would put poorer families in real difficulty.”
The march, which will join up with the People’s Assembly National Demonstration in Westminster, begins outside Hackney Town Hall at 12 noon tomorrow.
Cllr Glanville has written a letter to William Richardson at the Department of Communities and Local Government outlining his concerns.
The letter states that the policy “will act as a significant disincentive to work and aspiration” and will “increase housing benefit costs for the government”.
According to figures quoted in the letter, Hackney Council currently owns and manages 22,382 rental properties and 8,518 leaseholder and freeholder properties within the borough.
“The council has a waiting list of 11,036 households and over 2,000 homeless households living in temporary accommodation,” the letter states.
Figures from the Office of National Statistics describe Hackney as the 11th most deprived local authority in the country, with 70 per cent of all households on an income of £30,000 or less.
In his letter, Cllr Glanville describes how “this is in a context where house prices in Hackney have risen by over 60 per cent over the past five years”.
DIGS Tweet:
I’ll at @KillHousingBIll vigil outside Hackney Town Hall 7pm to highlight how the Housing Bill will make everything worse @radicalhousing
— Digs (@Hackney_renters) April 15, 2016
Michael Gregory Tweet:
Support Hackney tenants and join the demo on Saturday pic.twitter.com/GQjjl2kxw0
— MichelleSGregory (@s_gregory7) April 13, 2016
I read your piece and then noticed that it wasn’t really referring to the
key things that have been doing the Social Cleansing.
By the “key things” I mean the role of local Councils, including the Hackney Council -featured in your piece with a picture of the Hackney Town hall – in creating Social Cleansing.
Having read on Friday that a “sleep out” was being staged at 8 PM (Friday 15 April 2016) in the Roman Road, not that far from the Hackney Town Hall, – as part of the “campaign” against the Social Cleansing Bill (known in the “Palace of Westminster” as “Housing and Planning Bill” being processed through the two Houses where the planned victims and targets of the Cleansing are being “advocated” for by lines of patronising and matronising “P-EERS” none of who has any real life sustained experience of what has been already going on in Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham), I decided to check the Roman Road area , 62 Albert Jacob House in fact, to see if there had been any evidence left by last night’s publicised “Sleep Out” “CAMPAIGNERS”.
Such as placards, leaflets, banners even, showing the
Campaigners’ (supposed) opposition to the currently
ongoing Social Cleansing by Tower Hamlets Council.
There was none when I arrived between 0800 and 0830 (UK local time) this morning (Saturday 16 April 2016).
The only visible signs of any “human” contact with the Tower Hamlets Council-controlled building were pictures of three Tower Hamlets Councillors and their contact details.
Two of those state that the “surgery” which they apparently hold,
lasts in all for one hour!
How does that relate to the “activists” and “campaigners” praising “Tower Hamlets Council” for allegedly “opposing” the Social Cleansing Bill?
Is it possible for anyone, councillor or not, to even read in that time
the actual evidence that a target of social cleansing has with them when “approaching” the Council?
In Tower Hamlets and Hackney, Social Cleansing has been operated for years and this is being concealed by the ritualistic plugs in the “local” “media” that “campaigners” are taking part in “national demos” organised to “Kill the Bill”.
The evince is there is no campaign”trade unions” or by their surrogates operating as programmed “campaigners” to even accurately, reliably note the facts of the the Social Cleansing programme, let alone to hold the local Councils to any account for doing that.
It is not possible to justify the “campaigners” claims” that Tower Hamlets Council is against Social Cleansing. It is not.
Also, sitting councillors from Tower Hamlets Council are actively backing the Poplar HARCA, Tower Hamlets Community Housing, two of the de facto non-social ‘landlord’ outfits that were created by Tower Hamlets Council’s massive Council Housing Stocks being transferred to them.
Neither Poplar HARCA nor THCH has ever been held to account to the Community nor to Tower Hamlets Council.
Yet they have been allowed – as have a number of others similarly provided £Billions worth of Tower Hamlets Council Housing Stock – to behave as defiantly unaccountable to Society, to the ordinary population and most clearly to the so-called locally elected Tower Hamlets Council.
On Monday 18 April 2016, a TV Channel is UPDATING on the Campaign Against East London Councils’ Social Cleansing programme.
That (East London Councils’ Social Cleansing programme) has been ONGOING FOR YEARS – years before the current Social Cleansing Bill was even drafted.
0944 GMT London Saturday 16 April 2016
UPDATING this paragraph:
The evidence is there is no real, Community-based, Community-linked, rigorous, sustainable campaign being run by ”trade unions” or by their controlled and programme “locally-sited” or “locally-deployed” surrogates operating as programmed “campaigners” to even accurately, reliably note the facts of the the Social Cleansing programme, let alone to hold the local Councils to any account for doing that.
And Elaborating on the CONTEXT and setting out how Social Cleansing is being implemented with the participation of County Courts, Local councils and Licensed Law traders.
The last “Kill the Bill” “demo”, which had begun from the Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
was dominated by an empty, plastic-fronted agenda, with “trade unionists”
dominating the main platforms.
And allowing their ”approved” “allies” the subsidiary platforms.
That is NOT going to stop Social Cleansing in London or in the other main cities and urban areas in Britain.
Those who are dictating these ”demos” do not want to end Social Cleansing at all.
That is why they are not talking about – let alone against the Social Cleansing role of – the Councils, the County Courts or about the licensed law traders all three key arms of the Social Cleansing Programme that has been going on for many years.
0958 GMT London Saturday 16 April 2016