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Grenfell Tower, a huge block of social housing flats in West London, caught fire on the 14th June 2017, killing almost 80 people. This national tragedy, which has seen Londoners mobilise to help those displaced and bereaved, has also elicited protests and anger across the capital due to the fact that the incident might have been prevented if warning signs hadn’t been ignored.
Read the full article here.
“In the race to rent?” That’s what the advert from Rightmove asked at my local bus stop. It made me angry – housing is a right, not a race. But in the last two decades, instead of building housing for people, we’ve built a housing crisis. One which renters are at the sharp end of.
Read the full article here.
Over the past year I’ve been busy working on a jointly-authored book for the newly-incarnated Left Book Club.
The Rent Trap brings together a lot of the work myself and Rosie Walker have been doing on housing as journalists and activists. We interviewed everyone from policy-makers to people living in the worst housing conditions, and many degrees in between. What we are aiming to do is show why we have fallen into a rent trap, and look at some of the things we can do about it. Publication is due in March 2016. To find out more, check out the Left Book Club site.
The rise of housing campaigns in the UK has been amazing. Ten years ago there were a few campaigns, mostly local around protecting council housing from privatisation or demolition. Now there are dozens: private renter groups, anti-gentrification campaigns, anti-eviction campaigns, homelessness campaigns, and radical housing action. The Green European Journal asked me to write something up on housing campaigns in the UK, and it was clear to me that I had to write about the Focus E15 Campaign, which went from a small group of single mothers doing street stalls to a high-profile and active campaign on all aspects of the housing crisis.
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By no means am I a photographer, but I was quite chuffed to see some photos I shot at a demonstration used by Buzzfeed.
The demo was called by Digs Hackney Renters, and targeted a lettings agent in Stoke Newington whom the Telegraph reported had charged tenants £1260 to change some names on a contract.
Read the report and see my snazzy photos here.
