Focus E15
Focus E15 is a campaign group formed in London in 2013 by a group of mothers threatened with eviction from their emergency accommodation. E15 is the postcode of the Stratford district in east London. Having successfully won their own battle, the group has occupied various buildings and supported different individual struggles in order to protest against the local housing policy of Newham Council and for housing rights more generally. Formation. Focus E15 was formed when the East Thames Housing Association (ETHA) served notices of eviction to 29 mothers living in the Focus E15 hostel for young homeless people . The mothers, who were all under 25, campaigned against Newham Council's decision to cut funding for the hostel and its suggestion that they took rented accommodation in other, far away cities such as Birmingham or Manchester. Members of the group run a weekly help and advice stall on Saturdays on Stratford High Street. In 2015, they tried to talk to the mayor of Newham, Robin Wales, at the Mayor's Newham show in a local park but were escorted away by security guards. This lack of an adequate response led them towards direct action and protest occupations, which attracted  mainstream media attention. Robin Wales was later censured for failing to show appropriate respect to a member of the public by the council's standards advisory committee. He was also asked to attend a mediated meeting with members of Focus E15. The group's first occupation was at the East Thames Housing Association building in Stratford in January 2014. Mothers pushing children in buggies entered the offices and occupied the show flat. The fake living space was converted into a space for a children's party. Awarded funds to create a social networking hub, Focus E15 rented a corner shop  in Stratford and called it Sylvia's Corner. The name is a reference to east London socialist and suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst. Carpenters Estate. The group occupied empty flats in a block on Doran Walk on the Carpenters Estate in Stratford in September 2014. One flat was used as a social centre and visited by hundreds of people in its short lifetime. The protest action drew a lot of media attention and highlighted that even though the houses had been empty for between 4 and 8 years, they were in good condition and could be lived in. This was seen as  scandalous by Focus E15 since at that time there were 16,000 people on the waiting list for an apartment in Newham. Newham Council immediately went to court in order to obtain an eviction order and refused to listen to the demands of Focus E15. The Council stated that the Carpenters Estate was standing empty because it was too expensive to renovate and the plan was to redevelop it. The squatters were described as "agitators and hangers on" by a local councillor. The occupation and court case were both visited by Russell Brand, who spoke in support of the mothers. The  squat was documented by a photographer for "The Guardian". The council was granted a repossession order and a deal was made that the squatters would leave by October 7. Focus E15 took this as a victory, since the mayor apologised for the way they had at first been treated and promised that 40 homeless people could move back onto the estate to live there until it was demolished. Ultimately, most of the young women were rehoused within the borough as they had requested, but in privately rented accommodation and on 12-month contracts. The building which housed the Focus E15  Hostel was eventually bought by Newham Council in 2016. Mayor of Newham Robin Wales said this would make it easier to care for some of the borough's most vulnerable residents. Individual cases. Offer to live in Edgware. Zineb Saafan and her three children were evicted from a privately rented house in Stratford with two weeks' notice. The council at first said she would be rehoused locally, but then offered emergency accommodation in Edgware in north west London. Saafan refused this offer, finding it too far to travel both to take the children to their schools and to commute for  her job as a cleaner at the council offices. The council then said she had made herself intentionally homeless and called the police to escort her out of the housing office. Saafan and her children ended up sleeping the night on the floor of Forest Gate police station. When she contacted Focus E15 for help, she was offered emergency accommodation locally. Arrested on suspicion of squatting. In 2015, a mother (Jane Wood) and daughter were evicted from their council flat in Kerrison Road, Stratford, because Wood had lost her housing benefit and therefore fallen behind in rental payments. Focus E15  pledged to help them and occupied their flat in April 2015. The occupation was called "Jane Come Home", in reference to the film Cathy Come Home. Focus E15 redecorated the flat and held a 'welcome home' party. With the help of her wider family the mother offered to repay her debt but was not permitted to do so. She was then invited to a meeting at the council offices and while she was out the council attempted to repossess the flat. Jasmin Stone, a 20 year old participant in Focus E15, was in the flat at the time and was  arrested on suspicion of squatting in a residential building. The charge against Stone was dropped less than 24 hours before her court appearance in May 2015. Police station occupation. Four members of Focus E15 occupied the empty East Ham police station for one day in 2016 to highlight the availability of empty buildings in the borough and to protest evictions. They left peacefully at the end of the day and there were no arrests. Bedsit in Welwyn Garden City. Newham resident Elina Garrick and her three children were forced to accept a single room as emergency accommodation in Boundary House  in Welwyn Garden City. Welwyn is in Hertfordshire, outside London. She was told it would be temporary but ended up living there for 18 months. After complaining to the council and asking Focus E15 for assistance, she was first offered accommodation in Birmingham and then moved to Basildon in Essex. Newham Council have since stopped using Boundary House. Offer to live in Birmingham. Sara Abdullah, a Newham resident for 12 years, was living in emergency conditions for 6 months before being offered accommodation in Birmingham, a city over 100 miles away. When she requested a review of this decision she  was told that it was an appropriate one. Alongside other groups, Focus E15 supported Sara in her request to be rehoused locally. If she had accepted the offer to move to Birmingham, Abdullah would have lost her job and she would have had to move her son to a different school. Since she refused the offer, she was made intentionally homeless by the council and denied a right to appeal, twice. She then challenged the decision in court and won the right to appeal. New mayor. The new mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz (elected 2018), promised to rehouse displaced people  and also to give residents more of a voice on matters such as the future of the Carpenters Estate. However, in 2019, a woman living in Victoria House (the building which formerly housed the Focus E15 hostel) was hand-delivered a paper note threatening her with homelessness. Fiaz commented that the incident "undermines every thing we are working towards. I feel massively let down and ashamed that this happened." In popular culture. Between September 2015 and April 2016, Focus E15 members took part in and advised on participatory action research performed by Dr Kate Hardy (University of Leeds) and Dr  Tom Gillespie (University of Sheffield). This resulted in an online report which was supported by the Sociological Review Foundation. It was funded by the Feminist Review Trust and Leeds Social Sciences Impact Acceleration Account. The report gave the results of 64 interviews with people who had contacted Newham Council in the preceding year about issues concerning housing or homelessness. It found that Newham Council had both one of the highest numbers of people in temporary accommodation in the capital and one of the highest numbers of homeless people rehoused in places outside London. Lung theatre company performed the play "E15  on the Northern Stage at Summerhall, at the 2016 Edinburgh Festival. It was a verbatim account of the Focus E15 campaign, with a young cast and a theatre decked out with banners and slogans. Written by Helen Monks and directed by Matt Woodhead, the play then transferred to the Battersea Arts Centre, which had originally commissioned the piece. An all-female theatre troupe called You should see the other guy" toured their piece "Land of the Three Towers" across various London housing estates threatened with eviction. The play told the story of Focus E15, but the directors Emer Mary Morris  and Nina Scott saw the relevance for other housing struggles. The play's dialogue is taken verbatim from documentary footage of the Focus E15 occupation. The all-female Rebel Choir was formed out of Focus E15. It has run workshops and has performed alongside other choirs at the Women's Strike Assembly in central London on 8 March 2018 on International Women's Day. Also in 2018, cassette and digital formats of a music compilation were made available as a fundraiser for Focus E15, arranged by the online radio station NTS.