Down to City Edge on Mare Street last Saturday for the Inspire event.
The building used to be a hub of a community college just
across the road from where the Council
benefits office used to be, close to St Joseph’s Hospice in Mare Street. That’s too many used
to be’s in my book, but this is broke UK. The Hospice is still there, and it has a nice
garden.
City Edge is a conference centre squeezed to the back of an expansive
office building where space has been lost to small shops. A hand drawn sign
refers me to a narrow access route down the side of the building. I sit down on
the sidewalk to roll up with my
liquorish papers and mild tobacco, an astute and competent security officer questions
me, then leaves me alone with my nicotine addiction.
Before I know what’s what, I’m in a pleasant sunlit space in
a large room, where stalls have been set up. There are some 150 people milling
around. I am pleased to see so many
charities setting their boards up to help young people find a job. I am particularly thrilled to see a banner for
Equity, and to chat to a guy in Taggart .
Unexpectedly dancers
burst onto the floor, formidable women in their fifties dressed as Mary Seacole,
young girls with great poise and dignity strutting and swinging. There is a
flurry of African drums, one played by a studious boy in spectacles.
Before we know it the dancers have the audience up on the
stage, instructing them on the art of viewing
your derriere as the chalk that draws on the blackboard, 1-2-3-4. It turns out this dance troupe opened and
closed the Olympics.
The event was Inspire, a community initiative bringing together
groups such as DIG, private tenants who are coming together to give self help
over issues such as rip off rents, shady practices over deposits and a support
network for tenants who need help talking to their landlords.
Wilma bought a flat, then lost it. Struggling with serious
structural problems with her property she faced shoddy building standards, an indifferent
freeholder and eventually unemployment. She’s sofa surfing right now, but
working on a play about the loss of dignity that comes from being evicted onto
the street. She hopes to join a co-operative. I bet her play will be a corker.
Wendy is under 35 and was renting a small bedsit paid for by
Housing Benefit. Under new Housing Benefit rules (the “room rate”) she was
expected to move into digs with other people her age. She asked the Council for
transitional help and they said they would- after months of delay and four days before the
Court date. Too little too late, she was evicted and now has no secure home.
We write on big pieces of paper with magic markers, swap
tips.
In this Borough, home of the Silicon Hub of Hoxton, many
private tenants cannot afford the
accommodation, however rotten, that is available on the market. Young people
and those in early middle age who rely on benefits are expected to crowd in
with strangers, yet comparatively few landlords make such arrangements available.
The ones that genuinely do run houses in multiple occupation (HMO’S) often run brutal slums.
I leave after a couple of hours, knocked out after the flu
virus . Why is it that so much young to middle age talent is wasted, when dancing children make
it all look easy?
Who ate all the pies?
