ANOTHER Total Blunder
BlackBeltBarrister exposes the hypocrisy as a Labour-run council evicts over 200 tenants while advocating to ban no-fault evictions.
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Labour-run council evicts 200 tenants to cut housing waiting list
Cash-strapped Lambeth tells families to find new homes as backlog worsens
RUBY HINCHCLIFFE, ROB WHITE
A Labour-run council is evicting more than 200 private tenants because of its spiralling housing waiting list.
Lambeth Council said tenants were being evicted to house families living in temporary hotels and bedsits – an expense that costs the borough £28m a year.
The local authority, which last year blamed its £70m deficit on housing, said more than 4,700 homeless families are currently living in “unsuitable and expensive” temporary accommodation – 1,300 more than two years ago.
Homes for Lambeth, a private company owned by the council, has been letting out homes across five estates to private tenants at market rents for almost a decade.
But the council has now reclassified the properties, allowing them to be used for temporary accommodation.
As a result, the private tenants living in those homes – made up of around 160 families – have been served with Section 21 notices by the council.
Tenants said the local authority was forcing them out and leaving them homeless.
‘Unjust and unethical’
Jules Zakolska, 27, has been campaigning for the council to reverse its decision. The tenant has been told she must vacate her home by April.
She said: “The Labour party ran its campaign on the premise that it will abolish Section 21 evictions. Yet in Lambeth, a Labour council is serving its own residents with Section 21 notices.
“I am just very determined to try to fight this because it’s really unjust, unethical and doesn’t make sense logically or financially.
“We are the least well-off private renters in the borough, and lots of us have children and are classed as vulnerable. Once evicted, the majority of us will become homeless.”
The council said it took the decision to start evicting the families in mid-October last year.
But tenants have claimed the decision was made a year earlier, in November 2023, at an investment committee meeting chaired by Bayo Dosunmu, the former council boss.
In a note from the meeting, seen by The Telegraph, the council discussed the “open market private sales” of Homes for Lambeth properties to the local authority.
The council also acknowledged in the notes that it “will face some challenges in selling the private homes due to the tenure mix of the bloc[k]”.
Private tenants have argued that the council knew back then that it would have to evict residents as part of the sale. But Lambeth said no firm decision was made until a year later.
Tenants can’t afford to move
A spokesman for Lambeth said because those being evicted were “private sector subtenants…almost all of them will move on to alternative private rental properties”.
But residents said they cannot afford to move.
[…]
Lambeth has said its Homelessness Prevention Team will conduct “priority needs assessments” for all tenants affected, and if the main housing duty falls on them then it “will consider” whether the tenant should continue to live at the same property “temporarily” until suitable long term accommodation is found.
The London borough’s social housing waiting list currently consists of over 40,000 households.
A spokesman for Lambeth Council said: “The council has 4,745 homeless households in often unsuitable and expensive temporary accommodation.
“This is unacceptable and unsustainable, with the cost resulting in financial pressure impacting on all council services.
The Telegraph: continue reading
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