This article by Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth on Novaramedia is reproduced under the Creative Commons Licensing Scheme. The article is unchanged from the original
The 2011 Localism Act introduced new powers allowing
councils to discharge their duty to homeless households into the private
rented sector. Before this legal change, homeless households had been
able to reject offers of private accommodation offered by the council
and wait in temporary accommodation (often for extremely long periods)
until an offer of social housing, nearly always in their home borough,
was made. Now councils have powers to force people out of their
communities permanently and into insecure private accommodation – which
itself is one of the biggest causes of homelessness – and they are using
them.
The households that councils have a legal duty towards are families
with children and those with severe disabilities, meaning that it is
often people with vulnerabilities who are being forcibly removed from
their communities or threatened with homelessness. Whereas previous
investigations (in
The Independent and
Vice)
into social cleansing in London have looked at out-of-borough
placements for homeless households, these out-of-borough placements have
been for ‘temporary housing’, whereas the research in this article
looks at the ‘settled’ accommodation that councils offer in order to
completely discharge their duty to the homeless household.
Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL) has sent freedom of
information (FOI) requests to every council in London asking a number of
questions about how they are housing people in private accommodation
and outside of their home borough. All the information below is for a
16-month period from October 2013 (when most councils had finalised
their Localism Act policies) to January 2015 (when the requests were
sent).
1. 2000 homeless households were forced by local authorities into private sector.
Since October 2013 a total of 2128 families have been forced into the
private sector by the Localism Act, who previously should have been
given social housing. The map below shows that many of the boroughs
which use these powers are out of central London, in tube zones 3-6. The
powers are new and HASL has heard that some Labour boroughs are holding
off until others have ‘led the way’, hence few councils have forced
more than 100 families into the private sector. However Brent and Newham
have no such shame and have already forced nearly 400 and 1000 families
into the private sector respectively (see point 5).
Image 1: Total Localism Act offers per borough from October 2013 to January 2015. Boroughs coloured white did not respond.
2. Over 1000 households were forced permanently out of their borough and nearly 500 out of London.
Of the households forced into the private sector 1000 were given
places out of their home borough and 500 were out of London entirely.
The most common destinations were edge-of-London boroughs such as
Barking & Dagenham and Enfield, with Luton and Birmingham being used
the most outside of London.
3. 670 households pushed into further homelessness by the Localism Act.
670 households, which is a third of the households given final offers
in the private sector under the Localism Act, refused them. This is a
huge proportion, especially considering the consequences.
These
households will now be deemed ‘intentionally homeless’ for daring to
stand up to the councils and will no longer get any help off the
council’s housing department. They will then have to ask social services
for help, where HASL has regularly seen families threatened with having
their children taken off them for the crime of being homeless; in a
recent high profile case
the family were separated. Even if you keep your children, social
services housing is normally poor quality, can be removed at a day’s
notice and you can be put under punitive Job Centre-style programs for
finding your own flat, normally out of London.
4. People are refusing social cleansing.
Our research has shown that the likely reason the 670 households
refused their final offers under the Localism Act was because the offer
was out-of-borough or out-of-London. The six boroughs which recorded
people refusing offers (Barnet, Brent, Ealing, Haringey, Newham,
Wandsworth) were either the worst for out-of-borough or out-of-London
offers. This is shown clearly by comparing Sutton and Barnet, both of
whom tried to send 64 households into the private rented sector since
October 2013.
All 64 households in Sutton were offered tenancies in
Sutton and they all accepted the offer. In contrast, Barnet gave 38 of
the offers out of the borough, with 19 of those being out of London
entirely. As a result of offering housing so far away only 35 households
accepted (just over half).
5. Newham and Brent are the worst.
These two Labour-run councils accounted for two thirds of the total
mandatory private sector offers across London. Newham and Brent have
made 463 and 106 people homeless due to their private sector offers
respectively. Together they account for 490 of the 563 out-of-London
offers that have been made since October 2013 using the Localism Act.
Where others have held back, these two councils are blazing a violent
trail of social cleansing. Where Brent has made final offers to 48
households to move their whole lives to Luton, Newham has tried to
forcefully move 142 families to Birmingham (of which over 100 refused,
and are now presumably in further homelessness).
6. Many councils have not used the new powers but use more subtle force.
Even before the Localism Act, councils had many coercive tactics to
get households to which they owed a homeless duty to accept private
accommodation when they could have waited for social housing. This
involved councils lying to people about their rights, and some councils
are still using this method of forcing people into private housing over
the explicit force of the Localism Act. The Localism Act also introduced
powers to let local councils change their allocations policy for social
housing. Some councils, such as
Lambeth and Lewisham, are using this to give people no choice but to ‘choose’ private housing, regularly out of their borough.
When all the methods councils use of getting homeless households into
the private rented sector are considered together, a total of over 7000
households have been placed in private accommodation by councils from
October 2013 to January 2015. We found that in contrast to the forced
placements discussed above, private sector placements – mainly through
less explicitly forceful methods – are used most by central London
boroughs. The second map shows the movements of households into private
accommodation out of borough, and the worst are found in central London
such as Camden, Lambeth and Westminster.
Image 2: The total movements into the private rented sector out of their home borough that has been administered by councils.
7. Councils are administering social cleansing.
The effect of all these out-of-borough placements is to move people
out of central London into the outskirts and beyond. The final map shows
that most central London boroughs had more households moved out by the
council than moved in by others (red) and the boroughs on the outskirts
of London found more households moved in by other councils than were
being moved out (blue). This shows that London councils are
administering mass social cleansing as thousands of people are being
moved out of central London by their local council or threatened with
destitution.
Image
3 – The net movements into and out of each council area by councils
finding private rented sector tenancies. Negative (red) means more
households have been moved out of an area than into it, and positive
(blue) means more have been moved into an area than out of it.
8. This social cleansing is being challenged.
Both collective action and legal challenges are being made to stop
the social cleansing of our communities. The highly publicized
Westminster court case – although in relation to temporary accommodation
rather than permanent/settled housing offers – could have ramifications
for how local authorities find mandatory placements. The Focus E15 mums
campaign started as a fight to get housing in their borough when they
had been made offers in the private sector in Manchester, Hastings and
Birmingham. Their campaign won them private housing in their home
borough of Newham. Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth has made a
leaflet with useful information for homeless households
threatened with offers in the private sector. Local housing action
groups can help people challenge an out-of-borough offer both through
the appeals process and through collective action.
