False Economy
Earlier this month the Lambeth United Housing Co-operative organised a photo call in defence of their housing co-ops. This event was extensively covered by last week’s local press. We’ve now received several follow up letters in this week’s South London Press. Congratulations to the Lambeth United Housing Co-operative for getting such good publicity
Congratulations to the Lambeth United Housing Coop for getting a special feature of BBC Inside Out London. You can watch the film here
This month’s Brixton Bugle has a good interview will Jules Hall from the Lambeth United Housing Cooperative
Lambeth Save Our Services has been proud to support the campaign for housing cooperatives to provide affordable accommodation to people in Lambeth.
There’s lots of other good articles in the Brixton Bugle. There’s an article on the campaign to Save Lambeth College in Brixton. There’s also an article on what happened to workers in the Brixton Remploy factory after it closed. Disabled People Against the Cuts has been doing work on this issue.
A decent crowd turned up to the protest against the eviction of housing cooperatives last Thursday, possibly inspired by the publicity we got in SW Londoner.
Jules, from the Lambeth United Housing Cooperative, stressed the demonstration was important. The majority of remaining housing coops lie in the Clapham Town ward. The local councillors (Haselden and Wellbelove) promised to support the housing coops, a promise they then broke. Only Cllr Helen O’Malley, since deselected, has kept up her support
The venue of the question time has special significance. The Omnibus centre was saved from being sold off by various figures including local councillors, Mark Thomas (who sems quite supportive) and local author John O’Farrell (who failed to reply to numerous emails about the evictions). At the time the building was saved Cllr Haselden said: “we had to make the council see behind the pounds, shillings and pence” – yet he was quite happy to sell out residents of nearly 40 years standing
The atmosphere outside the meeting was great, the atmosphere inside the meeting less so. Cllr Lib Peck kept on saying the council couldn’t manage without the money that would be raised by confiscating the houses from the housing coop.
The fact Cllr Peck didn’t budge at the meeting wasn’t a suprise, but we do know Lambeth Council fears us. We’ve postponed the eviction of Charmaine Lodge and stopped the eviction of Jimmy Rogers through public pressure. We now need more public pressure to ensure housing coops continue to provide affordable accommodation in Lambeth
Lambeth Council have organised a leaders question time this Thursday. We hope to use the opportunity to ask them why they are trying to evict housing cooperatives and hand them to property developers at a time when Lambeth desparately needs more affordable accommodation.
We’re having a protest outside the event
Protest – Save Lambeth’s Housing Cooperatives
6:30pm Thursday 24th October
Outside the Clapham Omnibus project, 1 Northside Clapham Common (The Old Library)
Organised by Lambeth Housing Activists, supported by Lambeth Save Our Services
To get inside the event you need a ticket, which only a minority of us have. If you have a ticket please email Jules on juleshall@hotmail.com so we can coordinate strategies
We’ve won campaigns regarding housing cooperatives before. With your help we can do it again
Lambeth Save Our Services 