Rogue landlords gallery created in town centre

Local housing campaigners created a Rogue Landlords Gallery in the town centre last weekend (16 November). Housing Rebellion’s Grace Lally reports.

A steady stream of shoppers in Hastings town centre on Saturday 16 November stopped to read and take photos of a ‘Community Notice Board’ with a rather grim theme – the unrelenting misery caused by the housing crisis in the town.

The hoardings covering the former entertainment centre, OWENS, were covered in a variety of posters designed by local artists, tenants and campaigners, ranging from pictures of giant bed bugs attacking blocks of flats, to graphics about the landlord economy, and stories about tenants suffering revenge evictions after reporting repairs.

As one local renter commented, “So many different posters expressing the different issues of so many tenants in this town but the common theme is neglect and exploitation and wanting control over our housing, whether it’s a private landlord, temporary accommodation or social housing provider – they are not looking after our housing or us. Can we just fire these shady little monopoly men and do housing proper?”

Many posters promoted a phone number for Housing Rebellion, a direct action campaign linking issues of housing and climate justice. And another poster quoted the late anthropologist and author David Graeber: “Protest is like begging the powers that be to dig a well. Direct action is digging the well and daring them to stop you.”

The owners of the building Moxie Ltd had sent security guards on the day to warn people against putting any posters on the hoardings, but in the event they did not intervene when about 30 people took part in putting up the posters.

Local councillor John Cannan, there supporting one of his constituents who is currently sleeping in the woods rather than in his bed-bug-infested Southern Housing  flat, said: “I’m very happy to join with Housing Rebellion today using the new ‘Community Noticeboard’ to express our disgust at the Housing situation in Hastings. I hope Southern Housing are watching.”

The security guards ripped down the posters as soon as the campaigners left, including one which said “This is a community noticeboard paid for by £400,000 of levelling up government funding”, referring to the large government grants received by the owners of the building, as well as their former tenants OWENS, for their short-lived business venture.

Roost and Orbit were two other large landlords in the town named and shamed on the posters, in what was described as a Rogue Landlords Gallery. Roost currently rent hundreds of properties to the Council on a nightly basis at a very high cost as temporary accommodation for homeless people, but campaigners argue that if they rented out those same properties at an affordable rate on long term secure tenancies they could be part of the solution to the homeless crisis rather than seeking to profit from it.

Orbit owns a block of 53 flats near Hastings Station which it has left boarded up and empty for over a year and has no current plans to refurbish.

A Housing Rebellion member who took part in a protest occupation of the empty flats earlier this year said: “We created this Community Notice Board to highlight the real stress and anxiety people are suffering just trying to keep a decent roof over their heads, but events like this are also about creating community and creating a culture of resistance, because the only way for people to challenge rogue landlords is to stand up to them together.”

To contact Housing Rebellion email housingrebellion@protonmail.com or text 07760 234 851.

 

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