Residents protest against Guinness Trust evictions

Families gathered outside the Guinness Trust office on Monday morning to protest against their eviction from the Brixton estate.

The demonstration was organised after the Housing Association, Guinness Trust, handed out its latest round of eviction notices to the last “shorthold” tenants left in its Loughborough Park estate.

Residents said that if they were evicted they would not be able to afford the cost of private renting in the area and any options for rehousing they had been given were outside London.

At the protest was resident Zina said: “my children have grown up here, they go to school here, we want to stay. We don’t understand why some people have been rehoused on the estate but so many are being forced out.”

Another resident there was Betiel Mehari, who has two children and has lived on the estate for ten years, said she has been “living in limbo for years”.

“I have been living on a building site. Its hard to explain to children that we are leaving home and we don’t know where to go and yet they can see a building being built right next to them. How can you justify that?”

Mehari added: “Guinness Trust is a Housing Association. It was built on the basis to home the vulnerable. We are vulnerable. We have children under ten, we are single mums, we have disabilities.”

“It is a nice community and what they are trying to do is cleanse us out and bring in the middle classes to buy their new property.”

Green Party candidate Rashid Nix said: “its mental torture. These people were being served eviction notices over Christmas. They watch the building going on around them and know that the taller they get, the closer their eviction day comes.”

“Lambeth council and the Guinness Trust are each failing to take responsibility for what’s happening. These are vulnerable people and they deserve houses.”