March For Properties: St Leonard’s Church to Metropolis Corridor
Defend Council Housing, South London Folks’s Meeting and Unite Housing Employees Department had referred to as for a march to attract consideration to the disaster in housing, significantly in London the place council housing lists are big and plenty of councils are failing to fulfill their authorized necessities to rehouse homeless households.
These necessities usually don’t lengthen to single homeless folks and in London alone over 6,500 folks had slept tough at a while within the earlier 12 months with round one in twelve of 16-24 year-olds having been homeless sooner or later. Authorities figures comprehensively and intentionally underestimate the numbers.
It isn’t actually a housing disaster, however a disaster of reasonably priced housing. There are greater than sufficient empty properties to accommodate the homeless, however those that want housing are unable to afford the excessive rents or home costs being requested.
There was an enormous surge in constructing high-rise properties in London, with entire areas like Battersea and 9 Elms in addition to elsewhere throughout internal and outer London being more and more stuffed with them, however nearly all are high-price properties, many offered abroad earlier than the buildings are accomplished not as houses however as investments. Others are low specification pupil housing and likewise do nothing for the housing disaster.
What is required is a crash programme of housing at social rents for household items of all sizes. Builders have change into adept at evading what legal guidelines there are about offering social housing in new developments, fiddling the books to say they can not make adequate income which ridiculously lets them off the hook.
A lot of the UK issues over housing return to the Thatcher administration which each offered off council housing piecemeal below ‘proper to purchase’ but in addition stopped councils changing what they’d misplaced.
In earlier years each Tory and Labour councils had constructed usually prime quality low price housing although after all there have been some examples of poor planning (usually when councils had been pressured to chop prices) and shoddy work in addition to unlucky authorities encouragement of high-rise system constructing, which many people had been campaigning towards within the 60’s and 70s.
However maybe much more importantly below Tory administrations council housing turned one thing only for what they thought to be ‘feckless’ and the ‘dregs of society’, these unable to fend for themselves. We acquired this ridiculous idea of the ‘housing ladder’ and really a lot it’s a ladder that expresses “pull up the ladder, Jack. We’re alright“.
Municipal housing can present housing for all at low price and offered a rational approaching to offering first rate housing for all, getting away from the poor situations and excessive price of personal rented housing at a lot decrease price than proprietor occupation.
The March for Properties on Saturday thirty first January was really two marches, one from the Elephant in South London and the opposite from East London which I photographed at Shoreditch, calling for extra social housing and an finish to property demolition and evictions. On My London Diary at March for Properties: Shoreditch Rally I printed a really lengthy listing of among the numerous teams which supported the march, in addition to among the audio system on the rally there. Ultimately the march set off on its method in the direction of Metropolis Corridor, making its method in the direction of Tower Bridge.
Class Conflict left the march briefly to protest because it went previous One Industrial St, the place they’d been holding a protracted collection of weekly ‘Poor Doorways’ protests towards the separate door down a facet alley for the social housing tenants within the block. That they had briefly suspended the protests a number of weeks early when new proprietor for the constructing had provided talks concerning the scenario, however these had damaged down.
Approaching the Tower of London the protest was joined by Russell Model driving a bicycle. He had earlier lent assist to quite a lot of housing campaigns by residents in estates threatened by evictions.
By the point the march was going throughout Tower Bridge Class Conflict had rejoined it, and their banners had been within the lead.
The march was met on the opposite facet of Tower Bridge by the South London March for Properties, an analogous sized protest referred to as by Defend Council Housing and South London Folks’s Meeting which had began on the Elephant, marching previous the previous Heygate Property. The 2 marches merged to stroll on to Potters Fields for the rally outdoors Metropolis Corridor.
We had been marching a lot of the day in mild rain, and this acquired relatively heavier for the rally outdoors Metropolis Corridor. Along with a big crowd being jammed into a reasonably small area it made images of the rally troublesome.
Whereas the rally was nonetheless persevering with among the protesters started to go away Potters Fields to protest extra actively, led by Class Conflict and different anarchit teams and accompanied by the samba band Rhythms of Revolution.
They moved onto Tooley Avenue and blocked it for a couple of minutes, then determined to maneuver off, with police reinforcements who had arrived than taking up their position of blocking the highway because the protesters moved off eastwards.
I watched them go, and later heard that after a quick protest at One Tower Bridge, a brand new improvement primarily for the over-rich subsequent to Tower Bridge they’d taken a protracted stroll to hitch occupiers on Southwark’s Aylesbury Property.
However I used to be chilly, moist and drained, and my cameras too, having been uncovered to the climate for a number of hours had been changing into temperamental and I waited for a bus to start out my journey house.
Far more on My London Diary:
March for Properties: After the Rally
March for Properties: Metropolis Corridor Rally
March for Properties: Poor Doorways
March for Properties: Shoreditch to Metropolis Corridor
March for Properties: Shoreditch Rally
Flickr – Fb – My London Diary – Hull Images – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Images
All pictures on this web page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Tags: Aylesbury Property, Metropolis Corridor, Class Conflict, council housing, East London, Elephant, empty houses, empty properties, feckless, homeless, housing, funding properties, London, march, March For Properties, municipal housing, peter Marshall, police, Poor Doorways, Potters Fields, protest, rally, proper to purchase, Russell Model, Shoreditch, social housing, south London, Southwark, St Leonard’s Church, Thatcher, Tooley St
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