Protest as homeless people face return to the streets

Tom Zagoria, Labour Homelessness Campaign

FROM TOMORROW, the homelessness crisis is set to escalate further as the ban on landlords evicting tenants ends today, 20th September. Across England, thousands of homeless people have already been sent back to the streets as they lose places in “homeless hotels”.

In response, East London activists – from the Labour Homelessness Campaign, Homes for All Alliance in Tower Hamlets, and other groups – organised a “Tour with No Fixed Abode” walking protest from Tower Hamlets to Hackney on 2nd September. Despite rainy weather, dozens of protestors marched along the route, attracting support from passers-by (and a brief confrontation with the police).

The tour went through a city where luxury homes sit empty while human beings sleep outside – and are criminalised for having the temerity to seek the shelter of a doorway.

The walk began in the shadow of the 25-storey “Avantgarde Tower” in Shoreditch, where dozens of flats lie empty in an area where hundreds sleep rough outside. The development is controlled by a series of shady organisations and ultra-rich conglomerates based in the Virgin Islands – raising questions about what value to the community it is bringing. Not to worry – the flats are available at a reasonable rent just short of £5,000 per month, so the landlords are doing their bit to alleviate London’s housing shortage.

Nearby, the Bishopsgate Goodsyard development threatens to deliver a similar result. The tower blocks, each up to 48 storeys, which developers want to build there would – literally – cast a shadow over large parts of Shoreditch, without providing the social housing that the area needs. The “Reclaim the Goodsyard Campaign” addressed the protestors, encouraging members of the public to express their views in the public consultation which ended on 7th September. The protest moved on to the Boundary Estate, the site of Britain’s first council estate, to pay tribute to the history of radical local housing policies that should be a model for modern local authorities.

As they passed through Brick Lane and on to London Fields, protestors raised the absurdity of criminalising homelessness during a crisis created by the establishment. Authorities are using the infamous Hackney Public Space Protection Orders, which made rough sleeping and begging a criminal offence, the 1824 Vagrancy Act and a host of other orders to move rough sleepers on – and threaten them with fines for seeking shelter where they can.

The tour finished with homelessness workers and volunteers speaking movingly about the inadequacies of services for the homelessness, including temporary accommodation services. All too often these have been undermined and corrupted by the logic of austerity and privatisation and are not fit for the purpose of caring for people who have experienced severe traumas and who (justifiably) mistrust the system which has left them on the streets.

The protestors were clear that this is only the beginning. Until central government reverses austerity and local authorities begin to resist the absurd injustices in the system, activists will take direct action in solidarity with those experiencing homelessness.

●For more information about homelessness, go to:
Labour Homelessness Campaign

●Read more about it:
Sadiq and Boris offer hotel rooms to help the homeless
Corona Chronicles: the homeless hostel