From the Focus E15 Mothers’ campaign:

“It’s the second birthday of the Focus E15 campaign for decent housing.

Join campaigners this weekend as they march against evictions:

12pm Saturday 19 September 2015 at Stratford Park, West Ham Lane, London E15 4PT

Bring whistles, horns, sound systems, drums and pots and pans! We will not be cleansed and not be silenced!

The Focus E15 campaign was born in September 2013 when a group of young single mothers were served eviction notices after Newham council cut its funding to the Focus E15 hostel for young homeless people.

To make matters worse, Newham council had recently decided to prioritise access to social housing for people in work – a decision that effectively discriminates against single mothers and their children, who are being especially hit hard by the government’s public spending cuts and welfare reforms. When they approached the council for help, the mothers were advised that, due to cuts to housing benefit and the lack of affordable housing in London, they would have to look for private rented accommodation and were likely to be moved as far away as Manchester, Hastings and Birmingham if they wanted rehousing.

This attempt by Newham council to displace the mothers from London, removing them and their children from their families and local support networks, is just one example of a city-wide process of social cleansing, with low income people being forced to the fringes of London and beyond by soaring rents, benefit cuts and a shortage of social housing. This prompted the mothers to form the Focus E15 campaign, demanding access to decent ‘social housing not social cleansing’.

In the two years since its inception, the campaign has gone from strength to strength, with a weekly street stall in Stratford, and occupations of East Thames Housing Association show flat, Newham council’s housing office, an open top bus with petitions for Boris Johnson, a march of several hundred supporters to Newham Town Hall, and regular challenges to Labour Mayor Robin Wales – all contributing towards to the growing national profile of housing activists. The Focus E15 campaign sprung to national attention during the two-week occupation of empty homes on the Carpenters Estate in September 2014.

Join us this Saturday for a fun afternoon of marching, music and noise for people of all ages. Be sure to bring whistles, horns, sound systems, drums and pots and pans. We will not be cleansed and not be silenced.

At the end of the march we will meet on the Carpenters Estate, the site of the 2014 E15 Open House occupation, to highlight that it is full of perfectly good social housing that has been emptied and boarded up because Newham council wants to sell off the land to a private developer.

The finale will be a visual event to give solidarity to the more than 50,000 families shipped out of London boroughs in the last three years.

Campaigner and E15 mother Jasmin Stone said:

‘The housing crisis continues, with no major political party offering viable solutions. 26 families are evicted every day across the country. We continue to demand the repopulation of the Carpenters Estate, an immediate end to decanting and evictions of residents from the Estate, long term and secure tenancies for all, and of course, social housing, not social cleansing.’”

12pm Saturday 19 September – Stratford Park, West Ham Lane, London E15 4PT
Nearest station: Stratford Buses: 25, 86, 69, 104, 262, 238