Focus e15 housing Campaign
[iPhone photos]
KEEP US IN LONDON! NO TO SOCIAL CLEANSING! HOUSING IS A RIGHT
In August 2013, with no prior consultation, single mothers, all below the age of 25, were served with eviction notices by the Focus E15 Hostel in Newham/East London, where they were residing. The single mothers were offered accommodation in cities as far as Birmingham, Manchester and Hastings, hundreds of miles away from their families, friends and social networks. Refusing to take the offer they would make themselves intentionally homeless, thus the council/the local authority would no longer have an obligation to provide housing for them. Appalled by the injustice that was about to befallen them, and the predicament of making themselves intentionally homeless, the women thought they should campaign against their eviction. Chancing upon the weekly Revolutionary Communist Group stall in Stratford which was campaigning in the street against the bedroom tax, the commodification of housing and in support of housing rights, in September 2013 the young women joined up with the group and set up the Focus E15 housing campaign. From writing petitions, campaigning outside Stratford Tube Station, holding weekly stalls on the busy pavement of the old shopping centre, occupying the housing association offices that was managing the hostel, taking petitions to the mayor of London and setting up tents and cardboards houses outside his offices in Tower Bridge, organising demonstrations in the streets of Newham and the City, to occupying the nearby Carpenter Estate, a perfectly habitable social housing estate, yet deliberately run down and decanted by the council to make room for a new development, Focus E15 campaign became one of the most inspiring, creative, vibrant, engaging and empowering housing campaigns; not only in London but also in the UK.
Focus E15 campaign, under the banner of Keep Us in London! No to Social Cleansing! Housing is a Right, transformed the young women into inspiring, conscious women who campaigned in support of other families at risk of eviction and who drew linkages to other unjust struggles and causes. Refusing to be silenced and thanks to their campaign, the mothers were housed in East London, if in private-rented accommodation.
The photographs, some of which the first ever of Focus E15, were taken with an iPhone camera between 2013 - 2015.
