On Saturday 21 February campaigners from Housing Rebellion interrupted an attempt by Southern Housing to auction a property intended for use as social housing.
4 Wellington Gardens is a three bedroom house, built by the government in 1922 as part of their “homes fit for heroes” initiative to provide affordable homes for working class families and veterans of the Great War.
It was eventually given to a housing association (now Southern Housing) as were all of our local council houses, on the basis that it would continue to be rented at social rates for people in need of genuinely affordable housing.
A clause in the transfer deed for 4 Wellington Gardens (and a number of properties like it) specified that it should not be sold without the express permission of the government. It would be interesting to know whether this permission was sought, or indeed acquired before Southern put the house up for sale on the private market.
Prior to the sale, Southern Housing had inexplicably left the property empty for an entire year, while the number of people waiting on the Rother housing list exceeded one thousand.
This is not the first time Housing Rebellion have protested against Southern Housing’s unethical sale of social homes, nor is the first time Southern have used this same method – leaving the property empty and unmaintained for a substantial length of time, before putting it up for auction.
This is however the first time any protestors have been arrested. Police officers were captured on video as they arrested peaceful protestors inside the house for “aggravated trespass”, a charge that depends on trespassers disrupting “lawful activity”. If the sale is unlawful (due to not having government permission to proceed) then the arrest would surely also be unlawful.
It is disturbing to see police intervening so forcefully against a peaceful protest. A member of Housing Rebellion is on video explaining to police why the sale of the property is unacceptable, with the assistance of printed legal documents.
She is not behaving in a threatening, violent or intimidatory way, she is unarmed and she is effectively providing evidence for why she is not acting in an illegal manner. She is then handcuffed with her hands behind her back, as though a dangerous criminal. While police are permitted to use force in this way, it’s hard to understand why they would suspect this protester of possessing anything illegal (this suspicion and the resultant need to search someone is what allows them to handcuff a suspect).
In several previous cases of protesters disrupting the sale of social housing locally, police have not considered arrest to be necessary. In one case where protesters disrupted the viewing for an auction, the auctioneer erroneously reported to police that they were armed. Even this did not lead to searches or arrests.
While police may be encouraged to act as a private security force for landlords, removing and arresting people trying to disrupt the misuse of property, it is certainly not in the majority public interest for them to do so.
Local authorities have been known to purchase social properties being put up for sale to keep them out of private hands, but it’s clearly Southern Housing’s responsibility to maintain this property as a social rent, not the council’s. Besides, it seems unethical to sell a property back to a council that gave it freely.
Housing Rebellion has started a petition against the sale of 4 Wellington Gardens and all social homes still held by Southern Housing.
