shifting gears
Well-Known Member
*sets alarm
(Plural)
(Plural)
We are being taken to court by The Guinness Partnership Limited (Guinness Trust) tomorrow (22 June) for a Possession Order for 82 and 84 Elveden House. We will be in the County Court at Lambeth (Cleaver St, Kennington Road, SE11 4DZ) at 2pm. If you’d like to come, then we’d love the support, but more important than any court judgement is the fight in the streets. A Possession Order is not undertaken by the police, but rather by bailiffs and thus can be can be legally resisted. Resistance can take many forms, from barricading inside the flats, to blockading entrances, to supporting from outside the building. We can all play a role in resisting our oppression, the violence of evictions, and the gentrification of Brixton.
We may not know when the eviction will happen, so watch our twitter.
See you soon, friends!
BrixtonBuzz said:The Loughborough Park estate was built in the 1930s and provided 390 social rented flats. Under the Guinness regeneration programme, a total of 487 new-build apartments will be created, with the provision of social rented flats falling to just 211.
Guinness Trust maintain that a percentage of the new flats will be offered at “affordable” rents, which will be pegged at 80% of the market value.
BrixtonBlog said:The housing association is working alongside the local authority and private contractors to carry out a £75m transformation of the estate. The plan will see the demolition of the existing buildings, with 390 social housing flats and 525 new mixed-tenure apartments being put up in their place. The seven-year project is due for completion in 2018.
In August last year, one vulnerable resident of the estate, Steve Simpson, was found dead in his flat just months after a draining court battle with Guinness Trust that led to him being evicted from his home.
Another short-term tenant of three years, who did not want to be named, says her health suffered hugely after the ordeal of battling eviction. Following this, she was moved to a hostel by Lambeth Council for a year which she described as “like living in a box”.
She added: “Guinness Trust are playing a double game. They are talking about regeneration and modernity on one side, but on the other, they are getting rid of us.”
Ms Mehari was an assured shorthold tenant. While we had no obligation
to rehouse her, we felt it was the correct thing to do in the
circumstances, however, government policy meant that we had to offer
the new tenancy at affordable rent.
If you have more detailed questions about Ms Mehari’s case, we would
be happy to answer them, but to avoid breaching confidentiality, we
would need Ms Mehari to give you written permission for us to discuss
her circumstances with you.
FFS. This is so cruel.
Brixton single mother faces eviction after Guinness Partnership increases her rent by 240 per cent
Please share and sign the petition (just 215 signatures now so loads more needed)
The Guinnness Partnership: Stop Rent Exploitation
Got this email from Guinness:
Be a charity…. But a greedy profit making machine with no morals. Come on Guinness Trust… You’re better than this.
architectsforsocialhousing.wordpress.comASH RESPONSE TO ‘GUINNESS RESPONDS’
1) Beti’s tenancy status wasn’t an act of God. Like a hundred other tenants on Loughborough Park Estate, Beti, despite living there for ten years, was kept on an assured shorthold tenancy by the Guinness Partnership for precisely this reason: that when the time came to demolish her home she, like the others, would have no rights.
2) Guinness didn’t re-house Beti because they thought it was ‘the right thing to do’. They did it because she fought their demolition of her home. Unaffordable as her current tenancy is, she was only 1 of 11 ASTs to be so rehoused. ‘Doing the right thing’ didn’t stretch to Guinness’s treatment of the other 89.
3) Affordable rent is anything up to 80% of market rate. Beti’s current, unaffordable rent is set by one thing and one thing only: how much she can claim on a two bedroom flat on housing benefit, and therefore the maximum amount the Guinness Partnership can pocket from the taxpayer.
4) Another AST tenant from Loughborough Park estate re-hosued in the exact same block with the same number of children and therefore bedrooms as Beti is paying Guinness £175/week. The reason is that, although she is allowed to work in this country, she cannot claim state benefits.
5) Far from ‘doing the right thing’, the Guinness Partnership, as this response shows, are using vulnerable single mothers whose homes and lives they have casually destroyed to fill their pockets with taxpayers’ money paid in housing benefit by central government.
6) The Guinness Partnership are quite capable of giving Beti the social rent and secure tenancy she needs to rebuild the life they have torn apart. That they have refused to shows that this is their revenge for Beti standing up to them on the Loughborough Park estate, and they want to make an example of her to other tenants thinking of fighting their eviction by this unscrupulous and vindictive housing association.
7) Tenants facing the demolition of their homes on the Northwold Estate in Hackney are watching this campaign closely to see what the promises of the Guinness Partnership are worth.
Instead of sticking up for social housing and actively opposing the government the Housing Association movement has just given in. It's forgotten what it was meant to do.
The same goes with tenancies that HAs give. The government may like them to give time limited ones. It's up to individual HAs what kind of tenancies they use.
It's ok they have a new agenda Inside Housing chief executive salary survey 2015 | Analysis | Inside Housing
Alex
Within a narrow field, though. All HA tenancies are "Assured" tenancies (as defined by the 1988 Housing Act), and differ from secure tenancies (as defined by the 1985 Housing Act) in that if you get into arrears, the court has no discretion with regard to evicting you - if you owe 8 weeks of rent or more, you stand to be evicted. With a secure tenancy, the court can look at the facts behind the arrears, and act accordingly, so that a tenant is not evicted, and a reasonable compromise on the arrears is sought.
Article here on how high housing costs are affecting people.
There are now two distinct classes in Britain: Those who own property and those who are getting poorer
There also seems to be a growing gulf of understanding and empathy from those who own property towards those who rent (*based entirely on wholly unscientific personal observations and the hardening attitudes of some - but most definitely not all - home owning posters here).Article here on how high housing costs are affecting people.
There are now two distinct classes in Britain: Those who own property and those who are getting poorer