Social Housing Protest
Housing campaigners have occupied a four-bedroom house in Hastings in an attempt to prevent it being sold at auction by social housing landlord, Southern Housing.
Housing Rebellion said that the housing provider withdrew another family home from auction earlier this year after a similar protest by its members.
They are demanding that Southern Housing stop selling off homes and instead rent this house to one of the hundreds of homeless families in temporary accommodation or the hundreds more on the waiting list for social housing in the town.
Felix Lozano, from Housing Rebellion, said that due to the severe shortage of social housing, Hastings Council currently spends a quarter of the council’s budget on subsidising temporary accommodation for homeless people in private sector accommodation, including hotels and caravan parks: “The vast majority of Southern Housing’s properties in Hastings were originally built with public money as council housing. They have no right to flog off these valuable community assets when they are so desperately needed. We need more social housing, not less!”
The group says that only 189 social homes in Hastings were let last year, while there were 1,547 households on the waiting list.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply