Action On Homes

The Fight for Homeless Bill of Rights

daniel — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 12:41:56 +0000

Introduction to Homeless Bill of Rights

[David Thomas Homeless Bill of Rights Speech]

I’m David Thomas as you’ve heard I’ve been quite a long time the legal officer
for Housing Coalition and I’m here to talk to you about or remind you in most cases of Homeless Bill of Rights.

So it’s been mentioned time and again throughout the day including in Dan’s initial video, many of you will have signed the petition which we put forward to to for the council to adopt the Homeless Bill of Rights.

The Purpose of Homeless Bill of Rights

What it is for those of you who don’t already know Homeless Bill of Rights is a European document put together by voluntary organisations working with homeless people as a charter for cities to adopt it starts with our International obligation which is to deliver a right to a home even though the Homeless Bill of Rights exists because we fail to make that real.

The Demand for Equal Treatment

It demands the right to shelter for all who want it so that no one is ever forced to sleep rough in our city it’s also got extreme extremely practical rights built into it like the right to proper Sanitation but above all it’s a demand for people without homes to be treated the same as the rest of us not as a problem to be sold but as people with rights and dignity a demand for a different way of seeing, talking about and acting with homeless people.

So if you’re not familiar with the document there is a link on the website which will provide you with other resources and tell you about the
campaign.

The Role of Campaigns and Movements

The Coalition began a campaign to have this document adopted by this city with a launch in this building in October 2018. This conference for us honours two former chairs who have died since then.

Steve Perry chaired that launch and Barry Hughes spoke to the council in support of the petitionist which is Chaired by the executive director of Housing and it’s supposed to be the place where it oversees the operations of the council and its Partners in relation in field of homelessness.

The Importance of Practical Rights

First meeting was four months after the Bill of Rights was adopted and I’ve searched in the last few days through all the minutes and all the documents presented to it and all the agendas and there was one reference in all the meetings, it’s had so far for the Homeless Bill of Rights and I was in the first meeting which I happened to be present at where I asked how come there
was no reference to it in its terms of reference and Rachel sharp said “oh we can’t change those terms here” and that was it.

The Fight for Homeless Bill of Rights Continues

So in one sense this isn’t exactly a surprise uh senior officers at the council were never exactly welcoming to the idea that administrative efficiency is not the same thing as Humanity uh all that homeless people had rights and they never seem to be very much enthusiasm in the manager’s voluntary sector either.

Conclusion: A Declaration of Equal Dignity and Rights

So was it all in vein? well no I say, not at all. This document is a campaign document, like the city of sanctuary movement, we’ve inscribed these rights and principles into the official heart of the council and now we can use it in our campaigns to force people with power to take it seriously in fights on behalf of individuals or for policies and if the council is unwilling to use it as a standard to
judge its policies, practices and outcomes.

Then let us concerned citizens of the city use it instead. Homeless Bill of Rights declares that all of us whether or not we have settled homes are equal in dignity and rights and we must never give up the struggle to make that a reality.

[David Thomas Homeless Bill of Rights Speech Concluded]

The post The Fight for Homeless Bill of Rights first appeared on Action On Homes.

Exposing the Inequities: The Fight for a Fair Community Wealth Building Model

daniel — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 11:40:49 +0000

Introduction to the Preston Model or Community Wealth Building

[Cllr Matthew Brown Action on Homes Speech]

The whole idea of the Preston Model or Community Wealth Building, as it’s more commonly known is to really create an ecosystem in communities which works in favour of local people and local organisations.

So it’s trying to have an alternative economic approach that tries to circulate wealth through communities, which tries to promote real living wages, increase the amount of affordable housing, but crucially make sure that the ownership of the local economy is in a lot more hands.

So it’s not just necessarily outside corporations that might not pay the tax that a lot more of the economy is actually in the hands of local people Through having ownership models which they can actually share in the community.

Community wealth building needs to be applied in each particular locality because what Preston’s like is probably going to be quite a different to yourselves in Brighton but obviously the issues of inequality, the current form of Economics which you’ve had in polls nationally is the same.

I think what you can do is get all your big institutions together like the council can convene housing providers, universities, hospitals and make sure that the wealth that’s in there already through where they recruit, where they purchase, What they do with the London assets could benefit people in Brighton and especially dealing with people who are under lots of housing stress.

Local Ownership and Sharing of the Community Economy

So by doing that you have quite an entrepreneurial local state where you’re act together to try and achieve common outcomes, which are based around trying to deal with these Issues.

Without a doubt I mean our NHS has been quite a strong partner very recently, they’re doing pretty amazing things I mean for example the recruiting in the areas where deprivation is the highest, care assistants, get people into jobs there.

There’s a former NHS site where the delivering, well they will deliver very soon new housing by one of our registered providers which is actually housing cooperative, technically A Community Gateway, we’ve even taken over a private Care Facility just this week!

So they’re working very well now in terms of how what they do doesn’t just deal with health issues but the causes of the health issues which is the deep-seated inequalities in some parts of the community of Lancashire.

We are working with our institutions as well as getting developers to provide at least 30 percent Affordable Housing and then child poverty’s fallen in the last three years!

Alternative Economic Approach to Circulate Wealth in Communities

I mean I was at Brighton for Party (Labour) Conference, I think some of the businesses are fantastic, independent businesses I see lots of them there I do see quite vibrant social economy there to a degree which I think can be grown by tourism but you’re right there’s got to be a way to restrict the extraction of wealth away by often corporations.

Extract wealth out of the community to make sure that people are less well off because they’re going into the hands of institutional investors often somewhere way across the globe. Two of the largest global developers Tried to come into Preston and regenerate our city centre and that would have seen the semi privatisation of public assets put into a vehicle and the fact that didn’t happen now is probably one of the best things that happened to Preston in my opinion. Because we would have seen wealth extraction, privatisation of land.

When that fell through it is to harness all the institutions together and make sure we could you know use that public wealth to benefit the community through regeneration and other things in Brighton and it seems like it is still quite strong in terms of the public landing assets, but I think the key thing is actually having a culture where those land assets, you look at them strategically and you try to deal with problems around inequalities by having them.

A Whole Place Approach to Community Wealth Building

I think a lot of councils they just think well we’ve got a hotel or a golf course and we got you know 10 000 houses we just have to manage them they’re not thinking strategically about how they can actually reduce inequality as well as elements of uh of struggle.

Yes I mean there was an acceptance of some of the ideas but when I was talking about the need to put more of the local economy in the hands of the workers that is just something that uh a member an officer level that people are used to hearing to be honest.

So what did help Jim is the examples of you know alternative economies in parts of Europe which have been highly successful and especially the Evergreen cooperatives in Cleveland Ohio, were the abuse of purchasing power to establish a number of work-around businesses and supply goods and services that weren’t being supplied already to the Anchor institutions.

That really did inspire me so yeah the new ideas are quite frightening for some but I think when there’s an Evidence base of how radical economic policies are being applied in other areas and it’s having positive social impact, I think people learn and I think what did bring people around is just a complete failure the way things were working.

Balancing the Books while Working with Other Institutions

Beforehand the sense of austerity really biting and officers thinking well how can we deal with that uh you know failures in the previous lead inward Investments regeneration approach I think all that led to this and acceptance of these new ideas but I mean I don’t want to be too hard on Brighton and Hove, I don’t think you should be because they’re facing huge um cuts as well and difficulties in um budgets too.

I think maybe they are looking at selling off just to balance the books which is something they’ve got to do really but I think what they can do potentially is look at how they can you know work with other institutions and have an inventory of the current assets and seeing how that potentially could work for social benefit a little more they’re not doing already really.

A Whole Place Approach to Community Wealth Building

It’s trying to bring a whole place approach to community wealth buildings which is really important I mean one of the pillars of community welfare wealth building is making Financial power work for places so councils have their own Investments which I mean we’re looking to internally borrow to invest directly in our local economy to build a Cinema or Leisure development which will be publicly owned,

As I said earlier there’s procurement so it’s looking at the services can they do things like break contracts down into pieces, so a lot more of it are likely to be won by locally based businesses instead of you know the big corporations often win lots of this public contracts.

Council Investments and Their Potential for Social Benefit.

I think we’re the public pension fund invests is quite key because that could get a return uh in the region because that the one in Lancashire that we’re part of is worth 10 billion and we persuaded it to invest 100 million in Preston and in the neighbouring districts some years back, but we want that to go a lot further!

Then as I said earlier land assets can you know raise you know Community wealth as well I mean land could be transferred to community organisations they could run a service that will you know tackle poverty and other things.

I’ve not been informed by my office as other governments about the switch to this digital situation, what I do know is that the staff have not increased and the problem has and I do know that they are working very hard and under, you know a quite difficult circumstances, but again we as members oversee these things because, ultimately we are the people who people vote for in Preston and as I said really importantly people can go in the town or speak to someone and I think that is the most human thing to do.

Whether that happens in every single city of town I don’t know, I can imagine in Brighton it’s that larger City and there’s that many organisations, sometimes it’s difficult to get them all together but that could be an advantage because if you did have some kind of new strategy that would be city-wide and have Community Support, that would involve all those 100 plus organisations, I think that could be something that could be quite powerful to be honest!

The post Exposing the Inequities: The Fight for a Fair Community Wealth Building Model first appeared on Action On Homes.

The Hidden Costs of Empty Homes and Second Homes in the UK Housing Crisis

daniel — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 11:11:29 +0000

The housing crisis and building the wrong kind of housing

I titled my little piece today for empty homes tell us about the housing crisis. so a few headlines on the screen there that stem from some of our work over recent years lots of numbers being thrown around. I quite like the one about Home Building being at the 30-year high but empty home is showing it’s the mankind I often say that one of the big problems with housing policy these days is we’re building the wrong housing or the wrong kind of housing.

We’re building far too many properties that are aimed at a higher income or some people sometimes called luxury into the market and we are not building enough social and genuinely affordable housing.

That might seem like a rather obvious thing to say but I probably should tell you how our work in empty homes kind of conjuncts with this if you like or how we came across it.

The phenomenon of buy-to-leave properties

Some years ago we were commissioned to look at a phenomenon called buy to leave property and by to leave it’s a kind of phenomenon that we associate perhaps with towers of luxury flats in London you’ve probably seen similar ideas when you look at a big new development and you think, you know there’s lots of development happening. We’ve still got a shortage of housing and then you look at these developments and they don’t look very occupied!

We were commissioned by a charity of the trust in London to and we asked to look into what was called the buy to leave and what was happening to these houses and clearly in the property market for example like in London some of this stuff is ending up being bought by people who are trying to keep their either illegitimately or ill-gotten games safe from you know various various foreign governments they might want to keep it safe from, whether it’s Russians or the Chinese or whoever it happens to be. When we looked at it we found that wasn’t really the major issue.

There was much more housing going In other directions that wasn’t housing anybody, was remaining essentially empty it’s always recorded an official statistics sometimes recorded in ways not make it obvious it’s empty and very much below the radar!

The issue of empty homes in the UK

So when you look at basic statistics on empty homes you’ll find that they’re about quarter of a million empty homes in the country, that sounds like an awful lot and it is quite a lot although the developer lobby will always tell you “but it’s a small number by International comparisons”.

Then again you know I think as we move towards the Quest for Net Zero we shouldn’t really be in the business of trying to solve our housing crisis by making sure that 10 percent of our homes were empty, Not least when a surprisingly large percentage are empty already!

That statistic is like the ones that record as long-term empty there are a whole host of other types of empty home. When you look beyond that into the deep statistics you pretty rapidly find that.

Even without getting into the issue of second homes that don’t have any Primary Residential use, I know that’s a big issue around here as it is in many Coastal communities you pretty rapidly get to 653,000 homes that no one’s living in. Then the next part of the story is if you like are the so-called second homes…

What I think is interesting about government statistics on housing is that there’s no such thing as a third home, you can have as many second homes as you like a second home just a furnished home with No one living in it.

Second homes and short-term rentals

Looking into this kind of an area of second homes we started increasingly to look at the different ways in which people can make money from housing without actually having any residence and obviously one of the most significant of these which is probably I’m sure very significant in Brighton Hove is through rental on the short term letting Market through airbnbs because this area is almost completely unregulated.

In the UK or certainly in England actually because there is regulation coming in, quite forceful regulation in Scotland, and some very acute new policies coming in Wales as well. But certainly in England it’s completely unregulated and it’s essentially it’s a it’s a very easy way of making quite significant amounts of money from homes as they’re called, that don’t house anyone.

Some mapping for us from a nice website called airdna.org, which allows you to look at how many airbnbs there are in your area and how many of them are what we report entire home rentals or whole home rental, and hotel rentals are significant because the sort of Mythology of Airbnb is mythology about hosts, but increasingly people are investing in Airbnb almost the way they’d invest in a commercial property.

The home is managed by another company by another Middleman they may have numerous listings on Airbnb and essentially they’re just indigenous investment property this is essentially property being sucked out of the use. So this is how we got involved with AirBNB, how we kind of got into looking more and more at Airbnb and obviously since then we’ve been involved in a number of national coalitions on work to push AirbnB.

Approaches to regulate Airbnb around the world

We’ve been working with you know in Parliament and on select committees and all kinds of stuff like that, but probably the basic way that we need to address this, in this kind of context is to think about or be a sensible way for Airbnb to be regulated in your community. There are lots of very valid approaches around the world you know very straightforward licensing controls that have been applied in cities like Barcelona.

Various total bans in some areas that have been sort of experimented with an Amsterdam and they’re now being experimented in Edinburgh. So yeah there are very practical Measures people put in place.

I mentioned the Welsh legislation which is coming through a few minutes ago. What wales have done is they’ve actually created three separate multiple use classes of property for residential homes and they’ve said when you get planning permission for a house or your house is at default a normal Primary Residential home, If you want to change its use to a short-term let also a second home which isn’t going to be occupied and may even not be that.

You have to apply for a change of use! This is something that I think is probably kind of the best possible solution you can get to how you control and regulate Airbnb on a local level because that means the community can make its own decision, they can decide for example how important their tourist economy is.

When a developer comes through the planning application they might even apply to build something which is specifically for that market but then they can make a rational decision about it. The problem that we have at the moment is that there are lots and lots of uses of our housing over which we have no democratic control councillors are asked to give planning permission for homes and then mysteriously they find that the number of players they’re given Planning Permission for, or a number of homes that are meant to be contributions to social housing, don’t happen.

They find that even the normal Market sale items as they refer to don’t end up being sold on the open market it’s quite common for 20 percent of the development to be sold off plan, into an international market before the houses are actually being built or the flats are actually built. So you get this kind of degradation of the amount of stocks and I suppose that was the reason really what we we started off with this work on the on buy to leave.

Practical measures for councils

There are limited powers that councils have, the trouble is there are endless obstacles put in their way. when the supposedly very powerful empty dwelling management order legislation was brought in, something that was drafted by the last Labor government certainly and brought in by the subsequent coalition Lib Dem government, it was immediately eviscerated! You know it was made extremely difficult to get an empty dwelling management order.

I imagine well it sounds like a great idea in theory it means that the owner is not bringing their property back into use or just not-responding to the council and it’s been empty for a period of time originally gave me six months, it’s now two years.

Then the council can in Theory step-in and do the property up, rent it out for a seven year period and the recoup costs from the rental and anything left over would be given at the end of the period to the owner unless the dwelling order is renewed.

So in theory you know they seem a very sensible piece of legislation, in practice there are maybe a hundred or a couple hundred of them granted every year, some years it’s less than that because that Conservative/Liberal Coalition that brought it in, immediately as I say eviscerated that legislation, they put all kinds of obstacles in their way, the most obvious one being that the council have to prove to a property tribunal with the household was causing social behaviour and criminal activity, so it was a well-looked after empty home, just locked up as someone’s investment. Couldn’t do a thing about it!

My favourite people’s quotes on this incidentally Tory Council of Kensington and Chelsea you might think that’s an odd thing for someone who’s involved in the housing campaign but the only reason I do is because they have 10 000 of these and just I think the tour we take more than getting the Tories to sort of hit them with if you like.

So we are always very keen to get the Kensington & Chelsea Tories complaining to the Tory government about how they’d like to have stronger powers on this. That’s probably a reasonable point to get to if you like that’s where we came at it from, we came at it from what is sucking the housing out of the housing stock? What’s preventing housing getting into use? What’s reducing housing available?

And yeah clearly I think you know Airbnb is a big factor particularly in communities like the one here.

The other major factor of course we’re not building enough housing on the right site for people who most need it, which is genuinely important social housing.

— Chris Bailey Speech Concluded —

The post The Hidden Costs of Empty Homes and Second Homes in the UK Housing Crisis first appeared on Action On Homes.

Addressing the Housing Crisis: A Community Approach

daniel — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 09:32:04 +0000

February 14, 2023

Addressing the Housing Crisis: A Community Approach

Housing & Communities Writer

Housing can be built and let out at affordable rents and that saves money for the government, it saves a shed of money over the long term, It’s looking over the long term!

Understanding the Housing Crisis

[Cllr David Gibson Action on Homes Speech]

Thank you for inviting me and organising this conference because I’ve got a list of 15 ideas, and I didn’t arrive until 4:30. So I think it’s really brilliant to get to pull together all this stuff and what I’m hoping to end with is well what next? Well it is good to have gone through this and shared and discussed

but its that there needs to be steps forward…

The first thing is why is there a housing crisis? Housing is treated as a commodity subject to a market National governments have created what they describe as a housing crisis with their policies, most notably the right to buy, assured short-hold tenancies in the private rented sector, replacing fair rent tenancies though those ironically still exist, tax relief For buy to let landlords and we heard about Airbnb and the almost zero regulation of that area, large

scale transfers of council housing.

The reality is though that housing as a home is the essential Bedrock for households to flourish stuff has been done in Preston, I’ll check out the

homes available, but fundamentally the government has got to shell out grant money so that council housing can be built and we’ve done reasonably as a

council so the council.

Housing can be built and let out at affordable rents and that saves money for the government, it saves a shed of money over the long term, It’s looking over the long term! The same with retrofit you’ve got to look over the long term, so if you get massive additional Council housing at low rents then people can afford to work, it costs less on benefits, it’s good investment from the public person.

It’s like housing first, housing first is a good investment because it saves (as it was pointed out earlier) on costs elsewhere in the system as well as being the first the most Humane treatment for people suffering from homelessness.

So what about Brighton and Hove?

Someone else quoted figures on the rental market, I had a look the other day and a two bed flat the average rent that was last reported was £1,660 quid a month, £1,660 quid a month that’s more than a lot of people earn, the Local Housing Allowance rate is about £1,000.

So you know it’s driving people out of the city and affordability is for me the biggest problem in the private rented sector and we need we need some serious campaigning and rent controls and just put it out you know and I’m happy to write again to let the Landlords and then say you know please freeze your rents you know we don’t have the power to do rent controls but we can write.

We’ve got about 5,000 households on the (council housing) waiting list, that’s dropped a lot but that’s because it’s harder to get on the waiting list, about 2,000 now in in temporary accommodation, which includes emergency accommodation, which we’ve spoke about quite a lot today.

Next year council housing income is likely to see a six percent cut in real terms, it’s where it gets a bit less pleasant and that’s not bad because we can’t put the rents up by in Consumer Price Index (CPI) plus one percent, which is what would happen under the formula, but it will mean that we have fewer resources to do the kind of things we’ve been talking about, like retrofitting and to put towards additional Council Housing.

Homeless Service and COVID-19

We did get quite a bit of extra money in on the back of covid, but that is now reduced this year this next year and is reducing over the next three years of course we haven’t solved the issue and the tip of the iceberg in terms of homelessness which is people that are actually rough sleeping, the council is anticipating bigger austerity cuts next year than before under the new government and are planning for quite stringent savings. There is even delaying recruiting staff because the savings are not being achieved as much as we would like.

So what have we done and I know there’s you know we even welcome Acorn even though they’re not talking to us at the moment or not talking to me at the moment we really welcome being challenged and pushed and you know power and whatever, confronted with it, but we have worked together and they’re still at the back of the room.

A Joint Green Labour Work Program

Our joint Green/Labour work program which reflects our manifestos we had really high hopes, we’ve not got as far as we would like and there’s much

in as many areas and I know landlord licensing to be fair you know and Acorn like me are understandably frustrated by the pace of change on that.

We have doubled the rate of providing additional council homes than was previously being achieved, we’ve increased additional

council homes on low rents.

We’ve expanded enforcement in the Private Rented Sector (PRS) we’ve commissioned a study to look at (which has taken longer than we’d like) evidence base for landlord licensing.

We’ve signed up as David said to the Homeless Bill of Rights and we were the first in the country, to do that but rough sleeper numbers have been cut in half as David says , we don’t want it just to be a bit of paper it’s got to be you know genuinely a standard By which we judge.

We’ve signed the emergency accommodation charter to improve the commissioning standards in line with that and we brought emergency accommodation, as Daniel you know, as a testament to Daniel’s campaigning we brought emergency accommodation in-house and we need to do more of more of that. But emergency homeless accommodation, which no one wants to live there and should live there, whilst we’re improving the standards,

we’ve reduced numbers from 766 to 524 and out of city placements are down from 159 in the last six months to 149 and there was the closure of Kendall Court.

£1.1 million going into warmer homes grants for a low income households between 2021 and 2023 and a £7.2 million program for our private housing warmer homes grants in 23-24 to improve energy performance ratings and save on bills.

We’ve renegotiated the joint venture with with Hyde to achieve 176 Council homes through that joint venture all at living rents, which is the lowest

rents that the council have ever achieved and much lower than what they were being provided like when I first joined the council which was like LHA rates.

We’ve trebled housing first provision and we’ve done various bits and pieces which you can read on solar panels and Air Source heat pumps.

So crucially that’s and I think it’s been pointed out really well earlier in the session that is almost I am proud of it, but it’s almost a drop in the ocean and we’re swimming against the tide of a very bleak situation nationally and that is the important context, but you know we’re

here about what we can do, you know we can all do our campaigning to national government outside of this and I certainly do that.

So what can we do in Brighton and Hove?

Our joint program with labour and I think we do need to work together. The joint Green/Labour program talks about strengthening coordinated partnership working with Community homeless projects. Within that program there is scope there, it also talks about involving homeless people in a wide ranging review of support for homeless people, which is kind of what some of this conference covers, but I think those are two things that we, you know could look at building on.

I think you know, and I don’t know what Acorn, The Coalition and others are going to do but you know there’s an election coming up in May and I’m sure everyone will be deselected and uh you know, grilled about their policies.

We certainly did that with the living rent campaign going out to people finding out what their attitude is toward rent controls and things like that, so there’s a good opportunity there but also we can take from some of the stuff that’s come out of this conference and I think you know it’d be good for you all to promote this to get into manifestos and hopefully get into the two more progressive parties. I don’t want to make it party political.

I think it would be good for some follow-up meetings to look at the conference ideas when there’s been a write-up and you know with certainly with councillors as I’m sure Gill and myself would commit to that and I think we need to pull in, as appropriate Council Officers.

We need to harness the energies of everyone in this room as far as we can and it is frustrating working with the council, I’ve been frustrated it is frustrating you know, trying to get & make change when you basically feel like, why does it take so long? why can’t we just say? (I’m looking at Gill now) why can’t we just say it’ll happen.

Well it, you know its frustrating but more than ever you know we in the context of these kind of cuts that I’m talking about we need to build deeper and stronger partnerships because resources are going to be squeezed you know certainly in the foreseeable future.

So Thank you!

[Applause]

[Cllr David Gibson Action on Homes Speech Concluded]”

The post Addressing the Housing Crisis: A Community Approach first appeared on Action On Homes.

Empowering Working-Class People through Community Action: Acorn Renters Union

daniel — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 22:59:22 +0000

February 13, 2023

Empowering Working-Class People through Community Action: Acorn Renters Union

Housing & Communities Writer

“Power concedes nothing without demands”

[Paul Williams national organiser from Acorn Speech]

I am Paul and I am one of the national organisers for Acorn and for those who don’t know, Acorn is
a Community Union of working-class people fighting for a better life.

We’ve got thousands of members all across the country in about 30 groups
in different towns and cities now and we’ve won campaigns on public transport,
Community safety, defending public services, but we’re probably well
definitely best known for the campaigning we have done on housing including;
Winning affordable housing, Winningrepairs in Council Tower Blocks and
Housing Associations Campaigns to improve rights for renters, as well as
winning repairs for private renters and resisting evictions across the country.

We’re also part of the Renters Reform Coalition which is currently pushing
through reforms for renters rights in Parliament and one of the founding
partners of the Enough is Enough cost of living campaign as well.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about how appalling the
housing situation is in Brighton as I’m sure everyone knows this and I’m sure
you’ve talked about this many times today. I do think it’s important to mention
briefly some of the horror stories I have experience such as; illegal
evictions Revenge evictions, fires, rats, insect infestations, assaults from
landlords and what seems to be some of the worst housing conditions in the
country.

I don’t think I probably need to go into too much detail about how
completely insufficient the people of our council is with pretty much no
consequences for landlords to break the law in Brighton and often when the
council does intervene, um we’ve come across it resulting in
people being revenge evicted and harassed by landlords, because of the
lack of protection that people currently get from this Administration.

So in terms of practical Solutions I think what I want to talk about is
something that is absolutely key to how Acorn organises and key to all of our
successes and that’s power! So it’s great that so many people and
organisations here to talk about some really good ideas and come up with
policies and things like that but key to how Acorn has always organised unless we
have the power to force the decision makers whether that’s, governments
councils, landlords to give us what we want I don’t think we’re going to get very far.

So to to use a quote from an American slave abolitionist Fredrick Douglas claims
he said “Power concedes nothing without demands” and it’s true so that’s what Acorn does!

So across the country we’ve won campaigns against councils, governments, landlords because we make
demands and back it up with action. That includes going to a letting agent’s office and refusing to leave until they
get vital repairs done that includes physically resisting bailiffs when
they’re trying to forcefully evict people from their homes and that
involves using direct action against councils and it involves organising
deselection campaigns against politicians who don’t keep their word.

On that note, it’s interesting that we do have Councillor Gibson here today
as the ongoing dispute between the Administration and local Acorn branch is probably
very relevant and a good example I can think of this.

So just to give a better story Acorn members have been meeting with the
council we first approached them over two years ago to come up with some really
constructive ideas to reform housing in the city, including actions to tackle
criminal landlords and increase renters rights but unfortunately much to the
shock and disappointment of our members Councillor Gibson consistently refused
to make any clear commitments on taking action and it’s only when we started
making those demands and backing up with action that we started to make progress
and get policies changed through the council and finally get some clear
commitments from councillors as well.

However what we found is that after two years we’ve seen very little to no
progress on any of the promised changes, the excuses that we often get from a lot of
administrations but particularly what Brighton have been saying Covid, Staff Shortages, Cost of living crisis and
also bizarrely Council staff being blamed for actively undermining the
administration which suggests something going seriously wrong with the current Administration.

What we have found recently is that the administration will
backtrack and some of their key commitments to increase prosecutions and fines on
criminal landlords and Target dates for landlord licensing schemes.

Acorn Brighton members have approached the council leader Phelim
McCafferty, who’s currently refusing to meet with Acorn as he says “he is too
busy” which begs a question that if illegal evictions, dangerous conditions
and assaults from landlords as well as allegations made by councillors that staff
are undermining democratic policy decisions aren’t a priority for this Council,
then what is?

This is nothing new to Acorn we know how to take on politicians who
don’t keep their promises, we are doing it all across the country because we organise
all that, key principle of power demands action. Strangely for Brighton Council
which is run by Green I think they like to view themselves as a
progressive alternative to the mainstream parties, it has been in our
experience, been one of the worst administrations we have had to do with and
that includes some pretty bad labour and Tory councils across the country as well.

I’ve said before what has been successful in other parts of the
country is having the backing of strength in numbers and that’s what we do
in our organization, we organise with strength in numbers, we make sure that
we can hold our leaders accountable we use direct action, we organise and
deselect some councillors & politicians if we need to.

Our Union is made up of working class middle
too low income people. Some people who might know on your own you
have very little to no power, get ignored but if you’re able to unite and use our
strength and numbers and be organised we can win and that’s some of what I want
to add to this day, into this debate or conversation about practical steps is
that ideas equal policies obviously great and really important but it will only get us
so far.

From our experience apparent action by using strength and numbers as well
forces change and yeah you still join Acorn as well.

Thank you.

[Paul Acorn Speech Concluded]

The post Empowering Working-Class People through Community Action: Acorn Renters Union first appeared on Action On Homes.

Building a Brighter Future: The Benefits of Community Led Housing in Brighton and Hove

daniel — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 11:08:14 +0000

Community Wealth Building

Helen Bartlett:

Brighton and Hove Community Land Trust Speech

Thank you and I think it’s important to say here we’re not directly an advice service although by the function that we would really like to fulfil so what we do more is we try and support and campaign for community-led housing in the city and we see community-led housing as a potential solution to the housing crisis that we’re in.

So our vision is there a city where all current and future residents regardless of their income have affordable and secure housing and where the people of the city have homes that reflect their diversity and creativity local people have genuine control and choice in how they live and the city makes the best of its resources and so community-led housing for those who don’t know is a way in which groups of people come together to find shared solutions to their own housing needs.

So it could be about creating housing that’s affordable and secure for low-income people it could be about creating homes for Lgbtq+ people, we work with groups who are working with like young disabled adults but the critical thing is its groups of people who are working together often with the council and with the state but kind of taking control of their housing themselves and it takes different forms, Housing Cooperatives Community Land trusts etc.

We’ve had a lot of horrific stories, homelessness is so much the sharp edge of the housing situation we’re in but I also think it’s really important to look at it so widely you know housing is inaccessible for what is becoming the vast majority of people in our city.

These are some statistics and they’re from the 2019 Brighton and Hove City Council housing market report the reason, it’s a bit out of date because that’s the last one that was published that an average three-bed house so it’s worse now an average three-bed house costs £481,703 pounds and so to buy it requires an annual household income of £109,999. the median gross household income in Brighton and hold is £29,100, a third earning under £20,000.

So that means that like buying a house is Out Of Reach for so many people, if there isn’t like family and hereditary wealth there…

Meanwhile average rental costs at that time took up 68% of the median household income and and we also know about some of the other problems in the kind of private rented sector.

More recent analysis we did for a kind of scheme that we’re building up showed that the market went for a two-bed property is £1,584 and the current local housing allowance which is obviously Frozen at the moment it’s 1 000 pounds um so it’s just it’s just becoming um so difficult and for us one of the ways that we look at that and that’s been touched on as well and we’ll come back on that.

Who owns our city because we know right we know that there is development happening we can see it everywhere there are cranes everywhere so we need to ask the questions of like what’s being built for whom is it providing affordable housing is it providing the housing for the people in the city who we want to live here who is our city for um we would really recommend that um people have a watch of uh push the film which is about um the financialisation of housing um and I think uh later uh Jim referred to him uh Councillor Matthew Brown from Preston is going to look at um their Community wealth building model.

Community wealth building is one of both, I think it’s some four strategic priorities of Brighton and Hove City Council at the moment so they are looking at it too um and what he will talk about is a way that we can start to look at land and property through a lens of what benefits the community in the city rather than kind of through extracted wealth purposes.

I’m just going to show you this is a housing Co-op that exists in the city um it will tell you so a housing Cooperative is a form of collective ownership, if you know it’s made up of its members they’re the landlords and the Tenants and this is the housing called bunker housing Co-op who are building homes on Council owned sites really really beautiful sustainable Eco homes and their aim was to build high-quality homes for low-income people.

It’s an organisation that’s looking at building high-quality homes for low-income people they’re working with the Council on-site small infill sites that have been identified as possible for Housing Development so most of them kind of have to know the potential to go two to like six homes on them.

They are a group of people who are project managing it working with Architects and so on to kind of build these homes that will remain because, they’ll be cooperative owned so they’re, super sustainable really like energy efficient which is obviously the rest of the homes that we should be building and working in a partnership with Council for a nominations agreement and so on and as I said because they’re cooperatively owed they don’t ever move into like private ownership so they are never subject to like things like the right to buy, they always remain like that.

So that’s an example of a co-op that is doing it at the moment um the council does support community-led housing and there are sites that are coming, there are sites that are coming through we have what’s called a community-led housing pathway, where kind of again those small sites and groups go and have a look at the site and see if what they look like is suitable for their needs.

At the moment it’s a lot of quite small sites because obviously one of the things here is or one of the things that is said here is that you know there’s a lot of competition, especially for land in the city I think where we as an organisation would like to go.

There are cities countries in the world in which forms of community-led Housing and especially Housing Cooperatives are so much more predominant, in Vienna I think housing coops account for some 40% of the housing stock of the city and that’s because of governmental and local government policies that have kind of support that as a way of building and developing.

So I think what we’re looking at is kind of using the small sites as a way to move on and say let’s do something bigger and let’s look at if we were to look at something again and what we’re saying at the moment is if we were to look at something for a community wealth building lens, what would we do differently for land and property? and how would we kind of do that together and very quickly?

This is another project that we’re working on at the moment student housing is obviously conflictual in the city, I think often people see students’ identification in the city is kind of part of the problem of housing we kind of spin that a bit and look at it a bit differently which is that students are also kind of our young people and they’re often some of the people who are the most subject as well so like really where landlords take advantage of like their youth and inexperience and then subjected to really awful living conditions.

We work with a group, we have this partnership in which the CLT, we raised money through a mortgage and a community share issue and built a house that we lease to students and we see that as kind of supporting the next generation of Cooperators and of people who kind of subscribe to those values that are involved in those movements so we bought a house.

We looked at kind of buying hotels we bought a house in Moulscoombe that was already a house of multiple occupation, obviously, we know one of the issues in some of the areas is we know one of the issues is that kind of conversion of family homes into HMOs and we didn’t want to feed into that but what we’re doing is supporting a project in which those young people kind of really try and they want to engage differently with their local community, you know they see it as not just about affordable housing it’s about how we like to work differently in groups and with the kind of communities around.

[Applause]

Helen Bartlett Brighton and Hove Community Land Trust Speech Finished

The post Building a Brighter Future: The Benefits of Community Led Housing in Brighton and Hove first appeared on Action On Homes.

MP Bob Blackman Speaks on The Homeless Reduction Bill

daniel — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 10:24:47 +0000

Published: February 10, 2023
10:24 am

Updated: February 10, 2023
10:24 am

MP Bob Blackman Speaks on The Homeless Reduction Bill

Housing & Communities Writer

Bob Blackman MP Speech Action on Homes Conference.

Bob Blackman:

I’ve always sat on the select committee that deals with housing in its various different guises. So I’m on the levelling up housing and communities committee right now. We’ve done a year-long inquiry into homelessness in England and what was apparent to me very clearly from the beginning of that, was a lot of the evidence presented to us showed that people needed help guidance and assistance in finding a home when they were threatened with becoming homeless.

Now and I don’t differentiate this, the aim of the Homelessness Reduction Act was, not to deal with those terrible circumstances under which people are forced to sleep rough on our streets or go in a park or a park bench or somewhere, it was aimed to stop people from getting to that stage in the first place.

I mean the thing that astonished me prior to my act of parliament was if you approached your local Authority you went to Brighton Council, say they say;

“I’m threatened with being homeless, I’ve received a section 21 notice from my landlord and I’m going to be on the streets”

They will ask you very simply, they’d say to you well;

“Have you got children under the age of 16?”

“well no I haven’t no?”

“Well, are you mentally ill?” “not yet I’m not but I suspect if I’m on the streets I’m going to be”

“no, it doesn’t count” are you physically ill?”

“no, but if I’m on the streets I’m likely to degrade quite a lot, no.”

“Do you abuse alcohol drugs or other substances?”

“Certainly not he might say?”

So you might say at which point the local Authority will turn around and say well very sorry but we’ve got no duties to help you at all if you like to go and sleep on a park bench somewhere or at a shop doorway hopefully one of the housing Charities will come along and find you!

That to me in this day and age was an absolute scandal at the end of the day the stats still show that about just under half of homelessness happens because a private sector tenancy ends. The other reasons we know, are often relationship breakdowns and single homeless men have always been treated very badly by local authorities.

It meant that if someone was threatened with being homeless they could approach their local Authority the local authority would sit them down and say okay; “How do we prevent you from becoming homeless?”

At the end of the process, the aim was that no one but no one would actually become homeless because they’d be found somewhere to live. People that leave hospitals don’t have anywhere to live end up on the streets get ill again and end up coming back to the hospital, so actually, it saves the public purse quite a lot of money.

They’re also intended for prison leavers or it’s now an outrage in my view that still in this country, we release ex-offenders on a Friday, give them cash in their pocket, and pat them on the head and say don’t be a naughty boy, and to rebuild your life.

So we put statutory duties on Prison Governors to ensure that people had a safe and secure place to go and live when they left prison.

Youth homelessness hasn’t been addressed at all In this country. So the bill became an act, it took a year for the government from 2017 to 2018, to bring in advice and help for local authorities, on what to do. And there is a very helpful level of guidance on how they should all operate.

And then, of course, one of the other duties that we had under the ACT also kicked in and that’s the duty to refer. Where someone in a public body comes across someone who is threatened with being homeless, they now have a duty to refer that person to the local authority so they can be given assistance.

The whole aim of this you know was at the end of it, no one on the street should end up on the street sleeping rough.

The estimate is at the moment that some seven percent of private renters are in serious renter arrears, we are talking about 300,000 people who could become homeless literally overnight!

We do have some real problems here. We still have the challenge of even though the government have moved on I think the last stats I saw was something like 33,000 people taken off the streets and found somewhere to live, we still have a large number of people who are in hotels, particularly those that have no recourse public funds.

The government have failed to address and I have been pressing for that obviously to be dealt with.

Enormous sums of money are being allocated by the government to local authorities to deal with roughly sleeping/homelessness in general. Now how wisely that money is being spent, you know I think the jury is out on that!

Certainly in my view rent should not be raised more frequently than annually and then only by an agreed level of inflation. I think you’re absolutely right one of the things that I think should be done is to empower local authorities to borrow money to build new properties as long as it’s done on prudential borrowing.

Where they borrow the money to build properties, the rental income that they’re going to gain from the properties can then be ploughed back into repaying the debt and then if the property is brought under the right to buy then a hundred percent of the sale receipts should be ploughed back into building new properties.

I’m of the view of saying it’s far better to encourage tenants to get a job and work for a living, pay their rent from their income rather than existing on benefits because the rent’s so high that if they were to get a job they lose their housing benefit and then they can’t afford their rent.

So as you know up to 56 days before someone becomes homeless they can present themselves as being threatened with becoming homeless so basically under a receipt of a section 21 notice they could immediately approach the local Authority which gives the local Authority two months in which to provide help and assistance to get the person into a property.

That’s plenty of time in my view!

One of the problems is that some local authorities and I can’t speak about Brighton because I don’t know but some local authorities are ignoring the law and they’re still saying to people, “come back when you’re actually homeless and we’ll sort it out then.”

This means they come back with their bags packed literally and nowhere to live! The local Authority then has to put them into emergency accommodation at the cost of the authority which by the fact that it’s an emergency is much more expensive than if they arrange somewhere in the first place so you know to me, that not only is it a breach of the law but it’s also economically very very stupid for the council!

Just to cover off something that I think Daniel was raising earlier as well as what you said Jim, in terms of the staff at Brighton and Hove City Council working from home, it is a fundamental fact that the council have to provide a service. They have to provide help and assistance that’s a requirement under the law.

Now far better for me to encourage you to take legal action against your Council uh but from what I’m hearing, uh that is exactly what may need to happen because if they’re not fulfilling their Duty then that’s a statutory duty and I think you know that that’s something can be challenged and it could be challenged as Daniel said by one person not receiving the service they should go to court and challenge the local Authority for failing to provide the service. Now a strong case would be presented to the courts.

In terms of Jim what you’re saying about forcing the council?

Look you are the people that elect the council, you elect the councillors. You pay your council tax or your rent or whatever it is to the Local Authority. They are your customer, you are their customers, and they should be treating you as customers to be served.

Provided they can do the job from home now I fail to see how someone who is threatened with being homeless can actually have a proper conversation

with someone who’s working from home.

— Bob Blackman MP Speech Concluded —

The post MP Bob Blackman Speaks on The Homeless Reduction Bill first appeared on Action On Homes.

Dr Tim Worthley Calls For A Homeless Healthcare Hub in Brighton and Hove

daniel — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

February 10, 2023

Dr Tim Worthley Calls For A Homeless Healthcare Hub in Brighton and Hove

Housing & Communities Writer

There needs to be a Homeless Healthcare Hub in Central Brighton

Tim Worthley: Transcript from his speech at the Action on Homes Conference

“Thank you very much for having me my name’s Tim Worthley I’m one of the GP’s at Arch Healthcare, which is a brighton-based not-for-profit specialist healthcare provider and our mission is to explore every opportunity to improve the health and well-being of people experiencing homelessness.”

“We hold a contract to do that until March 2023, but there are talks ongoing about that being extended so we hope to have good news for people soon. In 2019 we were awarded an outstanding CQC rating achieving outstanding in all five inspected areas. So we were one of the very few surgeries in the whole country to get that and what’s lovely about that is that we know that we are providing not just decent Healthcare to people who are experiencing homelessness, but some of the very best Healthcare in the country, which is I think very very important that we all Inspire for that sort of Excellence, It was a very proud moment for us just to go back.”

“I am sure you already know this, which is that people experiencing homelessness in general across the country attend A&E 6 times as often, they’re admitted to hospital four times as often and they stay in hospital for three times as long compared to the general population.”

“Being homeless is really bad for your health, we know that very often people become homeless because they have serious health problems and then they remain homeless, often because they have serious health problems and then if they didn’t have health problems when they became homeless, they often then develop health problems whilst they’re homeless or get more health problems, it’s a real health issue being homeless.”

“We can see they’re, fifty times more likely to have Hepatitis C, twelve times more likely to have epilepsy, six times more likely to have heart disease, five times more likely to have a stroke, two and a half times more likely to have asthma. People it’s just so bad for you and that’s one of the reasons that we’re doing a specialist Homeless Service, which is able to care for people who are developing all of these different conditions much younger than really they ought to be. Often when people are homeless we find that they have a combination of mental health problems physical health problems and submissive problems and that’s all in the context of very insecure housing and the stress that brings, just imagine how difficult that is to manage.”

Tim Worthley: Transcript from his speech at the Action on Homes Conference

“Really sadly the average age of death for a woman who’s homeless in this country is 43 and for a man who’s homeless in this country is 47 and consistently over the last 10 years as we’ve been monitoring stats and writing you find very similar ages and brightens by our best efforts and if you’re home and see what you are nine times more likely to commit suicide than if you aren’t.

So that’s all very depressing isn’t it um and again telling you things that you already know, so I just want to spend a couple minutes talking about what Arch do and then I think then we can get into questions later about what we would like to do in the future. Because I’ve hardly touched on it. earlier we heard that there is so much good, we feel that our organisation is all about organisations all of our efforts do, but we’re also always painfully aware how much more we could be doing and how much better things could be?”

“So at the moment if we look at the homeless Healthcare landscape in the city we have Arch Health, that that’s us and we provide a GP surgery, we have about 1300 patients at any one time we offer about 14, 000 appointments a year every year we get about 500 new people registered with us and about 500 leaves so we stay consistent at around the 13 or 1400 mark!

We get to know a lot of people every year and try and offer them the best care that we can in fact we see about 1300 different people every year on average people that registered with us we’ll see them about ten times, it keeps us very busy!”

“We have about 12 or 13 GP clinics a week 12 nurse clinics for healthcare assistant clinics, one physio clinic and some off-site sessions. So we squeeze a lot into that time but again we’re painfully aware of the fact that we would love to be offering much more and there are days where we do turn people away, sometimes in significant numbers, which is just the most horrible feeling for any healthcare provider and particularly for us.

We’re really lucky that as part of our contract we’re able to offer more than that as well, we have a health engagement team which is provided by Just Life, who are the most wonderful organisation and they will see over 150 people a year they will offer about 4,000 contacts and they’re primarily for people in emergency accommodation. but not just and they’re about helping look after them when they come out of Hospital, helping them connect with Health Services, helping them with other things as well and obviously just Life provide an awful lot beyond their health engagement work.”

“But they’ve made a huge impact in the city and what we found was offering that level of support ,then the people were far less likely to be readmitted Hospital once they come out. We also have a hospital in reach team as part of our contract which is provided by a doctor, Dr Chris Sargeant and a couple of nurses and a wonderful team leader and they troll the wards of the hospital finding anyone that’s been admitted who is experiencing homelessness. They provide extra special care and advice and support to the teams that admitted them and look after them and then they facilitate a much safer discharge and they work with over 300 people a year on the wards and provided truly Wonderful service.”

“So as well as that we provide Outreach clinics in the community we’re running it with YMCA we’re running a step-down bed project at the moment. So people can be discharged from hospital a bit sooner than the others would have been and we run conferences in the city and also we’ve been already involved in covid vaccination they’re just about to start another round of covid vaccinations with some other partners.

We also Run multi-agency Healthcare that’s what we do but then there’s some other wonderful homeless Services & Healthcare Services in the city such as the mental health homeless team, um such as the substance misuse service and all the others that we work alongside.”

Just Briefly;

“What we want for the city because we’re, as I say painfully aware of what we’re not doing, this is a map just to show where some of the different settings are in the city, for people who need to access health support and we find that in the average day someone might need to walk as many six miles just to get to a few different services. We believe very firmly that that’s not good enough, that it’s unfair that it’s introducing barriers and it makes trying to get out of homelessness, it makes that a full-time job and let alone all the other things you need to do just to stay alive and to stay safe.”

“What we would argue needs to happen and we can talk about this a bit more later, we think there needs to be a Homeless Healthcare Hub in Central Brighton that brings all of these teams together, that has a GP service, that has a mental health service, that has a community nursing service, sorry I didn’t mention the Sussex Community Foundation Trust Homeless Team.”

“Which is a wonderful group of nurses physios that go into hospitals and other settings and just do amazing work. So they would be with us we would want some misuse workers with us, the health engagement team and we’d like to host housing workers and benefits advisors and social workers and it could be a real Hub of activity. We could run courses, run classes, there’d be a Cafe there.

We think the city needs it, consistently we are the second highest cityin the country for levels of homelessness, we have exceptionally high levels of drug-related deaths and suicides and when is the city really going to get imaginative about how we can have a coordinated structured response to this, because the problem isn’t going away and it’s not going to go away until we do things differently and we believe this is one the ways things that could be done differently and I will stop talkingthere.” [Applause]

Dr Tim Worthley Speech Concludes

The post Dr Tim Worthley Calls For A Homeless Healthcare Hub in Brighton and Hove first appeared on Action On Homes.

Andy Winter Speech: We’ve come a long way in the past four decades

daniel — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 15:35:27 +0000

January 27, 2023

Andy Winter Speech: We’ve come a long way in the past four decades

Action On Homes

Speeches & Transcripts

Homelessness is not a natural phenomenon, it is an engineered byproduct of a political system that continues to fail, and it has never failed as much as it has in recent weeks. 37 years ago, when I started a PhD in Sussex, there were roughly five different cohorts of people who would come to us looking for a service. Today, the same five cohorts are presenting themselves on a regular basis to our services, but there is a sixth group who we hadn't seen until the introduction of austerity in 2010: people who find themselves homeless purely for economic reasons. These are people who, in a hundred years, never thought they would need a service from an organisation like ours.

Andy Winter Introduction

At the Action on Homes Conference, Andy Winter, the CEO of BHT Sussex, the largest local voluntary sector organisation tackling homelessness on every level, delivered a powerful speech about the state of homelessness in one of the wealthiest cities in the world. Winter, who retired in January after 37 years of service, discussed the reasons for homelessness, the impact of austerity, and the preventative measures that organisations like BHT Sussex are taking to help those in need. He also highlighted the efforts of organizations like The Clocktower Sanctuary, Off the Fence, First Base Day Center, and Sussex Homeless Support in supporting those facing homelessness and poverty.

Andy Winter BHT Sussex CEO “thank you very much this I think is my last dance in my my role as I retired in January after 37 years at the BHT Sussex, so it’s it’s great to end on a high. I think at this stage my focus will be on homelessness and the prevention of homelessness um but first a question why are we discussing this today in fact why do we need to discuss those two questions. I’ve just realised why do we need to discuss this is because in one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries in the world, when some people have so much, we have people without a home and we have people sleeping on our streets? and others who are facing homelessness, poverty and destitution.”

Andy Winter Continues “Homelessness is not a natural phenomenon it’s most unnatural, it is an engineered byproduct of a political system that continues to fail and it has never failed as much as it has in recent weeks. 37 years ago when I started a PhD in Sussex there were roughly talking very generally you have five different cohorts of people who would come to us looking for a service they were Care leavers, they were people escaping violence and abuse in the home, there were people with alcohol and then later drug problems those with mental health problems and ex-service personnel.

Today the same five cohorts are presenting themselves on a regular basis to our services but there is a sixth group who we hadn’t seen until the introduction of austerity in 2010 there were people who find themselves homelessness purely for economic reasons people who in a hundred years never thought they would need a service from an organisation like ours.”

“They’re people who might have been in relationships and the relationship breaks down and one of the partners moves out thinking they will find somewhere else to rent only to find that the rents in city like Brighton and Hove are completely beyond their means, We have people who come to our day Center First Base who are sleeping in their cars, they come they have a shower and then they wash and put clean and dry clothes on.

I put the kettle on and I get some food out of the cupboard for breakfast but if you had slept on the streets of Brighton last night there is no toilet, there’s no shower there, is no Kettle there, is no food, food and cupboard.”

Andy Then said:

“Fortunately there are some brilliant services in Brighton who do support people at the lowest emergence places like The Clocktower Santuary, Off the Fence, First Base Day Center, Sussex Homeless Support. Through a special word should be mentioned, who were outstanding during the lockdown, supporting people in the hotels and I don’t think people would have survived that if it wasn’t for that exceptional organisation and there will be others represented here today and I apologise I probably missed naming you and we can you can beat me up afterwards.”

“We need to stop people getting onto the streets in the first place, last year through our advice and support services, we prevented 1777 households from becoming homeless, 506 of those were in Brighton Hove, over a thousand were in East Sussex and a few in West Sussex we run a Court Duty Scheme in the Lewis, Brighton and Hastings County Courts where people who are facing losing their home will arrive very often never having not spoken to anybody that they were on the verge of homelessness.”

“The concept of homelessness that people who have never had advice that there are people who arrive with a bag full of unopened envelopes from their mortgage company from their landlord or whatever and they don’t know how the court system works, they have just received a summons fortunately the court actually will direct them to our solicitors and our advice workers in the court who will then take an immediate instruction from them and seek a deferment, sometimes it’ll be an hour or two sometimes it might be for two or three weeks.

We can then take a good proper review of the legal merits of their case um and we can then protect them from homelessness, so the bulk well not the bulk the majority of the cases, 688 cases we’re through our Court Duty scheme.”

Andy Winter Continues “our advice services, we do a lot more than that BHT Sussex has the first base day Center as I mentioned we have Phase One Project, Addiction Services, a range of mental health services including Shorehouse, that has been in use recently because of the situation.

There are other amazing organisations I’ve already mentioned, Sussex Homeless Support this is Saint Thomas, Rise, St Mungos, Sussex Nightstop, YMCA and I know I’ve missed some out again and again I do apologise if I haven’t mentioned your service none of us are perfect some of us are a long way from being perfect.”

We’re (BHT SUSSEX) aware of that we always try to improve we try to get feedback to see what have we done have we not done as well, as we should be I’ve run out of time I need to stop, I will finish off with four very brief things:

We need to act on behalf of our clients without fear of favour
We need to ensure that there are no delays of even one hour from helping somebody off the streets
We need to campaign jointly for the building of council houses in their hundreds of thousands and;
We need to campaign for the end of the right to buy we need to demand more from our political leaders and challenging what they’re doing to end the scourge of homelessness.

Andy Concluded;

“There is a Latin American priest who I would quote by doing this we might make ourselves very unpopular but this priest doesn’t hold a commodity, He once said “When I feed the hungry they call me a saint, when I demand to know why are they hungry, they call me a communist.”

So whatever the damage to our reputation we mustn’t hold back, we must be proof of your power.”

— Andy Winter Speech Concluded —

The post Andy Winter Speech: We’ve come a long way in the past four decades first appeared on Action On Homes.

Exciting Speakers Announcement: Shelter Participating. Book Tickets Now

daniel — Thu, 06 Oct 2022 06:10:00 +0000

October 6, 2022

Exciting Speakers Announcement: Shelter Participating. Book Tickets Now

Action on Homes

Solving our Homeless Crisis Together As A Community

ACTION ON HOMES FESTIVAL OF IDEAS SPEAKERS

Speakers & Participants Announcement!

Action on Homes is delighted to announce that joining our packed line-up of speakers for the Action on Homes Festival of Ideas Conference later this month is:

MP Bob Blackman – Bob is a member of parliament who brought the Homeless Reduction bill to parliament, which later became law. The act itself puts a lot more empathise on the Local Authority to provide interim homelessness relief and a plan out of homelessness.
Alison Mohammed Shelter – Alison joined Shelter in 2015 from Rethink Mental Illness where she was COO. Her particular interests are in co-production, mental health, organisation development, support for people with no recourse to public funds, and anti-racism. She leads on safeguarding for Shelter.
Andy Winter – CEO BHT Sussex. Andy Winter is the lead director for BHT Sussex. For decade Andy has led and grown the organisation which does a lot of homelessness, legal and recovery work across Brighton and Hove and Sussex. Andy will bring good insight into what is and is not working within housing and homelessness.
Hannah Bradburn – Senior Housing Solicitor at Lawstop who has a legal practice here in Brighton and Hove and were successful in high court action against Brighton and Hove City Council for the: Ncube v Brighton and Hove City Council case.
Tim Worthley – Tim is more than a GP Tim is also someone with a very good grasp on the mental health aspect, for his co-practice Arch healthcare was set up to reform the way we treat the homeless and do a lot of clinical partnership work and help patients in a way other surgeries simply cannot. Arch Healthcare has up to 5000 patients who are either homeless or previously homeless. Tim reaches out across all spectrums to give a voice to the preventable homeless deaths in Brighton and Hove and has been vocal in the press on the issue. Tim will be attending and participating and hopefully speaking. One not to miss!
Brighton and Hove Coalition Members – David Thomas will be talking about the Homeless Bill of Rights two years after it was adopted in Brighton and Hove. Daniel Harris will be discussing his interactions with those homeless and housed and what his client’s surveys say. Jim Deans Sussex Homeless Support, Jim will give you a unique insight into the frontline of homelessness and poverty.
Jess and Matt Turtle – Founded Museum of Homelessness.
The Museum of Homelessness, led by our community, does four things:
1. We make tomorrow’s history by building the national collection for homelessness
2. We take direct practical action in support of the community
3. We fight injustice with our independent research and campaigning
4. We educate on homelessness by working with artists and creatives to make unforgettable art, exhibitions and events.
Lord Bob Kerslake – Discussing the Progress report into Rough Sleeping and Homelessness services.
TWO OTHER LOCAL AUTHORITIES DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY – Exeter and Preston City Council will be represented at the festival of ideas
Peter Apps – Inside Housing. Peter is a great investigative journalist and will be covering loads of solutions and stuff which can solve the issues.

Who is the action on homes festival of ideas conference for? and how can I get a ticket?

Simply: ANYONE AFFECTED AND/OR INVOLVED

Action on Homes welcomes those with lived experience, survivors, those people unable to gain support, like asylum seekers and those with no recourse to public funds, the LGBTQ+ Community, care leavers, people of colour and those with disabilities and other impairments, young people, key workers and those living in overcrowded, inhabitable homes, renters who share and anyone currently on the council housing register!

Action on Homes welcomes those with lived experience, survivors, those people unable to gain support, like asylum seekers and those with no recourse to public funds, the LGBTQ+ Community, care leavers, people of colour and those with disabilities and other impairments, young people, key workers and those living in overcrowded, inhabitable homes, renters who share and anyone currently on the council housing register!

Learn about good design

The Fight for Homeless Bill of Rights

February 14, 2023

Exposing the Inequities: The Fight for a Fair Community Wealth Building Model

February 14, 2023

The post Exciting Speakers Announcement: Shelter Participating. Book Tickets Now first appeared on Action On Homes.

Action On Homes

The Fight for Homeless Bill of Rights

Introduction to Homeless Bill of Rights

The Purpose of Homeless Bill of Rights

The Demand for Equal Treatment

The Role of Campaigns and Movements

The Importance of Practical Rights

The Fight for Homeless Bill of Rights Continues

Conclusion: A Declaration of Equal Dignity and Rights

Exposing the Inequities: The Fight for a Fair Community Wealth Building Model

Introduction to the Preston Model or Community Wealth Building

Local Ownership and Sharing of the Community Economy

Alternative Economic Approach to Circulate Wealth in Communities

A Whole Place Approach to Community Wealth Building

Balancing the Books while Working with Other Institutions

A Whole Place Approach to Community Wealth Building

Council Investments and Their Potential for Social Benefit.

The Hidden Costs of Empty Homes and Second Homes in the UK Housing Crisis

The housing crisis and building the wrong kind of housing

The phenomenon of buy-to-leave properties

The issue of empty homes in the UK

Second homes and short-term rentals

Approaches to regulate Airbnb around the world

Practical measures for councils

Addressing the Housing Crisis: A Community Approach

Addressing the Housing Crisis: A Community Approach

Housing & Communities Writer

Housing can be built and let out at affordable rents and that saves money for the government, it saves a shed of money over the long term, It’s looking over the long term!

Understanding the Housing Crisis

So what about Brighton and Hove?

Homeless Service and COVID-19

A Joint Green Labour Work Program

So what can we do in Brighton and Hove?

Empowering Working-Class People through Community Action: Acorn Renters Union

Empowering Working-Class People through Community Action: Acorn Renters Union

Housing & Communities Writer

“Power concedes nothing without demands”

Building a Brighter Future: The Benefits of Community Led Housing in Brighton and Hove

Community Wealth Building

MP Bob Blackman Speaks on The Homeless Reduction Bill

MP Bob Blackman Speaks on The Homeless Reduction Bill

Housing & Communities Writer

Bob Blackman MP Speech Action on Homes Conference.

Dr Tim Worthley Calls For A Homeless Healthcare Hub in Brighton and Hove

Dr Tim Worthley Calls For A Homeless Healthcare Hub in Brighton and Hove

Housing & Communities Writer

Andy Winter Speech: We’ve come a long way in the past four decades

Andy Winter Speech: We’ve come a long way in the past four decades

Action On Homes

Andy Winter Introduction

We’re (BHT SUSSEX) aware of that we always try to improve we try to get feedback to see what have we done have we not done as well, as we should be I’ve run out of time I need to stop, I will finish off with four very brief things:

Exciting Speakers Announcement: Shelter Participating. Book Tickets Now

Exciting Speakers Announcement: Shelter Participating. Book Tickets Now

Action on Homes

ACTION ON HOMES FESTIVAL OF IDEAS SPEAKERS

Who is the action on homes festival of ideas conference for? and how can I get a ticket?

Learn about good design

More Articles

The Fight for Homeless Bill of Rights

Exposing the Inequities: The Fight for a Fair Community Wealth Building Model