Dismore challenges Mayor over Sweets Way and broken housing promises

I challenged Mayor Boris Johnson over the Sweets Way evictions and the Mayor’s broken pledge that people should not be moved from the place they have been living and where they have put down roots.  

 

On BBC Radio London on 28 October 2010, the Mayor said:

“What we will not see, we will not accept, any kind of Kosovo style social cleansing of London… On my watch you are not going to see thousands of families being evicted from the place they have been living and where they have put down roots. That is not what Londoners want to see and that is not what we will accept.”

 

I asked the Mayor:

What do you say about your pledge to the 140  families, former residents of Sweets Way in Totteridge, who were all evicted  by Annington  Homes in February ? They have been scattered to the four winds, away as far as Birmingham , Luton and Chingford , and all over north London, as a result of high rents beyond the housing benefit limit and the capricious approach to enforcing  their ‘one offer’ policy by Barnet Council ? 

What do you say to  Juliette, sent to Tottenham, then Cricklewood and   is now in temporary emergency accommodation in Potters Bar, far from her work at B and Q , her daughter’s school and her friends- she has to spend an extra £72.50 a week in fares to work and to her daughter’s school.

Or to Dilem, who lived in the area for 12 years and whose 10 year old brother the council threatened to take into care when her family was evicted, and is now in temporary accommodation a long way from her brother’s school, and whose future accommodation is dependent on an appeal against the council’s decisions?

Aren’t they ‘being evicted from the place they have been  living and where they have put down roots’?  You’ve accepted it haven’t you, despite saying you wouldn’t?”

 

We had the usual waffle from the Mayor, who seemed to think these cases were exceptions. it is clear they are not, and that across Barnet people are being moved about like pawns on a chessboard. Barnet are behaving in a capricious   and unsympathetic way to the victims of the Sweets Way eviction, treating them like dirt.

These are people  who are  in work with families who have lost their homes through no fault of their own and who according to the Mayor should be able to stay in the area where they have put down roots. Clearly Barnet Council do not share that policy, as people are deported not just all over north London bt further afield too,  and have been threatened with no help by the Council  due to their unfairly applied ‘one offer’ policy.

It is clear the Conservatives, whether at City Hall or in the Council could not care less about people like these, in desperate housing need. They have broken their promise and people like those form Sweets way suffer as a result.   

 

 

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