As tenants and residents of Peabody and Family Mosaic Housing Associations, we have come together to insist that:
* Peabody and Family Mosaic must not amalgamate. The amalgamation of these two Housing Associations is not in our best interests. Each is already too large, remote, and unaccountable to its tenants. As they have grown, services have deteriorated exponentially, and this must stop.
* Peabody and Family Mosaic must maintain the traditional values of housing associations and defend social housing. This means no sell-off of existing properties, no extension of the Right to Buy, no introduction of short-term tenancies, no further implementation of the 2016 Housing Act, no building of houses for sale and commercial rent, and no collection of data about tenants’ income or immigration status.
* Peabody and Family Mosaic must decentralise and localise housing services. Our housing associations have become too large, staff are inaccessible and their morale is low. Remote call centres and extended chains of communication should be abandoned in favour of being able to talk directly to housing and neighbourhood officers and repair teams.
* Peabody and Family Mosaic must drastically improve repairs and maintenance performance. This can be achieved by localisation, but also by ending outsourcing of contracts to commercial building companies who are themselves too large and remote.
* Peabody and Family Mosaic must maintain genuinely social rent levels for all tenants. Rents must be pegged for social tenants, as well as for key workers who are classified as ‘Intermediate Tenants’, and whose rent has been increasing each year well beyond inflation and income levels.
Peabody Family Voice, January 2018
JOIN US so we can help each other campaign on these issues!
Contact us at hello@pfvoice.org.uk
Family Mosaic tenant – we have had no consultation on amalgamation yet – not even a letter let a lone a meeting!
I live in housing association flat in Wincanton, Somerset, for the past 15years. When I was given my flat the housing association was South Somerset Homes, and I was truly grateful because my life partner had died, leaving me a single parent of a teenage daughter, sliding into debt each month because I couldn’t earn enough to pay commercial rent.
However, time has moved on and my landlords are now known as Yarlington Housing Group and since 2010 life here has changed. Last year, I was told by the housing officer that what we live in are not homes but Yarlington Properties.
Life here is a nightmare. In 2010, the arrogant and patronising Yarlington management began a programme of what I can only describe as ‘social engineering’. I took them to task because of the cruel way they were treating a mentally disabled tenant/neighbour, who had lived in his flat all his life. They wanted him out. At that time they denied my accusations and called it an accidental case of miscommunication. However they were threatening elderly families who have lived in their council houses all their lives with eviction at the slightest opportunity, then offered them a new kitchen in an old peoples unit miles away and a site warden to replace the support that they have from their families who live in this town. Now we live in an Orwellian nightmare of lies and bullying. Try phoning them and you are told the ‘portal’ is closed and only online communication is allowed. Many tenants are very elderly and others too poor to afford internet. This comment box is too small to describe what is happening here in the south west but recently, Bristol Council and Avon and Somerset police were found culpable of institutionlised rascism and two policeman were jailed. However the ‘ism or ist’, in social/council housing is much bigger than race, colour or creed. I’m a white english grandmother and have found that all mine and other tenants human rights are null and void because we live in social housing. Even petrol bombers are allowed to commit attempted murder by arson on our street and only recieve community service sentence because no one died, Please look up news stories of Bijan Ebrahimi in Bristol and the petrol bombing on Mundays mead, Wincanton, Somerset if you have any doubt. It feels and looks like to me; that, we the ordinary people of the South West, England, are held in contempt by both our housing providers and Avon and Somerset police who work hand in glove with our social housing providers.
I’d like too see us all join hands, regardless of race, colour creed or wealth. I’d like to see county and national union of council and social housing tenants. I’d like to see us all united because then we would be a force that mealy mouthed career politicians and land grabbers without social conscience or human empathy would have to listen to.
Thanks Sally, we hope to organise just such a coming together of decent people like you and us.
Tim Smith PFV