HRH join the Hastings Council Housing Strategy Steering Group

Steering local housing policy?

During another Hastings Housing Alliance meeting, we learn there is to be a new housing strategy for Hastings. There hasn't been one throughout the pandemic. So, essentially, the council have had no guiding policies on how they go about housing just as renters are facing the worst rent hikes and eviction rates. Bonkers. We are told to take part. For the people at the sharpest end of things, the housing strategy steering group is not something they would readily come by, and so we expect there won't be much representation. At the very first meeting, landlords flood the room, complaining of how their passive income will be hit, while the burnt out voices of renters tired of demanding their basic rights insist on being heard.

A presentation is given by the new lead housing officer - Chris Hancock. The council now spends two thirds of their whole income on temporary accommodation for those made homeless by.....landlords. And yet that's never explicitly said.

We are asked to put post its on the walls of the policies we wish to see. Community Led Housing goes up, and gets lots of little dotted stickers of approval. By this point the landlords are disinterested. One approaches and tells us that taking too many people from temporary accommodation will cause us problems. She seems to be confused about the situation - she is causing the people in temporary accommodation problems. She is the reason they are there.

We have attend more meetings since, with much less people. We say the same thing over and over, and it's not until we are split into sub working groups that we get to ask for our specific policies. Dawn Dublin of Black Butterfly is there making the same demands, as is Simon Basey from the board of Hastings Commons and Coin Street.

It's hard to know if anything's sticking, as we have to explain really quite obvious things so many times, and drown out the voices of landlords and consultants seemingly hired for consultations. It's all feeling a bit like a waste of a number of evenings much better spent resting from this kind of things. But we push on.