Simon Lee, secretary of Hastings Area Southern Housing Tenants’ Association, reflects on the living situation in a local housing association estate. Anyone who has lived in the Four Courts will know that the most frequently asked question of anyone is ‘how long have you been here’? When I arrived just over a year ago, I…
Lizzie Beck It might take a minute for this to sink in. The latest statistics from a report carried out by homelessness charity Shelter reveal one in 64 are homeless in Hastings. Both shocking yet oddly unsurprising, these figures lay out in black and white the genuine crisis hitting our town. The cause for the…
Grace L. Image: tenants’ protest July 2024 One Tuesday morning in February, tenants in the Four Courts flats in Hollington got a hand delivered letter inviting them to a meeting the very same day with their landlord, Southern Housing. The meeting would be about moving them out of their homes within a year. The whole…
No-one deserves to be removed from their home and abandoned to the streets. Having grown up in Hastings, Karl (not his real name) worked as a fisherman for many years, surrounded by a strong local community, and also spent some happy years living abroad. But everything started to go downhill after health problems in his…
A 44-year-old mother of two is facing eviction. Hana (real name withheld) is a full time carer for her nine-year-old autistic daughter, and has been a Hastings resident since her teens – but she can no longer afford to live in this town. Why? To start with, a large number of homes are being taken…
Merlin Betts Hastings Housing Alliance has been formed to start fixing our local housing crisis from the ground up. But let’s not forget the lesson to be learned here: who can we trust to look after our housing, guaranteeing fair prices and good maintenance? Ourselves! Pictured above: 4 December launch day at the Observer Building,…
Merlin Betts Voting time on Acorn’s launch day at His Place Community Centre. Acorn is like a trade union that can represent people regardless of trade, especially renters. We need that in a town with rising rents and a housing crisis. They also lobby on related things that matter to us, like cost of living….
Lizzie Beck I’m not from these parts. Neither am I DFL, AFB, EDL or WTF. I didn’t actually choose to come here either, I was moved here for reasons that if revealed would result in assassination (of whom I don’t know). It was nighttime when I first saw this town. From a hill above what…
Sarah Gomes Harris co-founder of Hastings Rental Health, considers the very real consequences of living in a home that’s never allowed to be a home. “The sky hangs over us dark and low, like a dirty screen, on which the clouds are fighting fierce battles. That’s what our houses are for – to protect us…