social housing

An excellent three-part interview with Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth whose organising sees them fighting both private landlords and local councils to defend tenants.

A detailed look at squatting in 1970s Hackney, East London. Using oral history to recall how women squatting in the 1970s carved out a space for themselves to self organise in a decaying London, neglected by municipal structures. The article argues that by creating a physical space for themselves women in Hackney were able to shape and create the kind of feminist movement they wanted, which in turn helped them to create better places to live in.

The Homes & Community Agency(HCA) is the UK state regulatory body for social housing; its job is to monitor the performance, finances and provision of services of landlords. Missing from the media coverage of the Grenfell Tower fire disaster so far is any discussion of what relation the HCA has to this horror story of corporate murder. Given the years of complaints from Grenfell tenants(1) about their landlord the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation(KCTMO)(2), we can reasonably ask why the HCA never stepped in to investigate the terrible tenant-landlord relationship and the many fire safety complaints tenants had flagged up repeatedly before the fire broke out.

A detailed history and analysis of the militant St Pancras rent strike of 1960 against council rent increases written in 1972.