Social housing is being driven by profit. Tenants must fight back
As residents of Peabody and Family Mosaic, we fear losing our rights if the two housing associations become one
Housing associations have preserved an image of being more socially responsible than private landlords or local authorities. In fact, their drive to become more commercial and the way they treat tenants means they are often little better.
In response, housing association residents are getting organised to defend our rights. Our campaign group, Peabody Family Voice, launched in January after a consultation meeting organised by Peabody in late November left us angry. We are opposing the amalgamation of Peabody and Family Mosaic, two of London’s largest housing associations. The two organisations merged in 2017, but full amalgamation, which has yet to be approved by the Peabody board, would mean all Family Mosaic tenants becoming Peabody tenants.
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Here are examples of unfit management, over a period of 10 years at just one Family Mosaic flat, remember this is one flat. The reason for this neglect being of course to pay Brendan Sarsfield’s extortionate wage. As far as I know he can’t actually be sacked. Brendan Sarsfield has been overseeing this shameful performance and really he should do the decent thing resign and let someone else take over who has some talent for the job.
12 months to repair a leaking drain sewage waste seeping into the basement.
7 consecutive no shows to repair a faulty boiler, action only effective after a direct intervention by tenant at head office.
Scaffolding left for 3 months to do roof repairs amounting to 3 days work, no inspection, no assessment, no specification.
Painters painting a house not having been paid for 3 months by unscrupulous private painting firm.
Tradesmen carpenter being forced to work 10 straight hours without a break (this is actually illegal and unsafe)
Roofer forced to work alone on exposed roof at height, unsafe working conditions.
Family Mosaic refusing to pay for essential repairs such as a re-wire of entire flat (paid for by the tenant)
Three separate private companies insisting on scaffolding this house three times for small repair jobs.
Six months to repair a waste pipe from a bath.
No contact information or direct management of work, no assessment of repairs, no inspection of finished work.
Secretaries hanging up on tenants trying to get work attended to.
Mosaic totally abandoning cyclical repairs.
Mosaic losing stock condition information from Savills after abandoning stock condition survey.
2 years to repair collapsed ceiling.
Call centre staff executing a policy of refusing to give contact information and refusing to give reasons for doing so. This is a management directive.
If you look at the language of Family Mosaic who offensively address tenants as “customers” and no longer tenants. You can sense that this all began with the discraced Thatcher administration who first introduced the idea of the divisive and discriminatory “right to buy” This led to the hemorhhaging of valuable housing stock intended for generations of low income families into the hands of private speculators who now own around 50% of social housing sold to tenants. This former social housing is now sold at great profit or rented at 4 or 5 times the social rent. Hence at Grenfell some flats next to each other were rented at £100 a week and some were rented at £500-£600 a week. Strangely only those told repeatedly to stay in there flats were the ones who may have been told they had made themselves “intentionally homeless” by leaving a burning building!
CAn we set up a link page to relevant past publicity about Famil Mosaic?
Like this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-32118673#_=_