Evicting Londoners to tackle homelessness
Plus: The hunt for the Lime bike tyre slashers, Morgan McSweeney's phone theft mystery, and the restaurant owners losing their spots in Brixton.
Today we’ve got a bizarre story about how Westminster Council has been indirectly making Londoners homeless so it can use their flats to house homeless Londoners.
Scroll down to read that parable of the capital’s baffling housing market, or first read on for a series of quick updates on what’s going on in London.
The Morgan McSweeney phone theft complex
Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s former chief of staff, has been in the national news this week after claiming he’s lost the WhatsApp messages he exchanged with disgraced former ambassador Peter Mandelson. The reason? His work phone was snatched by a thief on a bicycle last October on Belgrave Road near Victoria station.
The Met Police initially closed the case without investigating the theft, even though the phone in question was being used to run most of the government.
Depending on your level of cynicism, the loss of the phone is either a convenient incident – or admirable proof that the Met’s failure to investigate phone thefts is a universal policy that does not discriminate. (The police have since huffily released a transcript of the 999 call made by McSweeney and pointed out that he didn’t mention that he was the prime minister’s chief of staff).
Luckily, London Centric has been working on a forthcoming story about phone theft in the capital, which includes police data obtained by former Lib Dem mayoral candidate Rob Blackie.
McSweeney’s phone was stolen in what is known, in Met Police terms, as the “Central West” policing zone. In October last year there were 1,341 people, including McSweeney, who reported the theft of a phone in that area. How many of them have so far seen a “positive outcome”, such as a thief being found and held responsible? According to Blackie’s data, it’s a sum total of… two. Most of the other devices are likely to be on their way to a market in China or Algeria.
Don’t expect to see those WhatsApps any time soon.
All roads lead to…
We were intrigued to read in Vittles, London’s leading in-the-know restaurant publication / investigative food outlet, a story about the eviction of restaurants from Brixton Plaza in south London. In some senses it’s another London tale about traders who built a community on a site awaiting redevelopment – and are now preparing to see that destroyed for something blander. What caught our eye was the name of the landlord. While it’s difficult to trace through a web of legal entities, the company responsible appears to have links to… the family of Asif Aziz, the boss of Criterion Capital.
Talking of which, our reporting on Criterion Capital’s mass evictions of residential tenants has reached the Guardian, where Peter Walker got hold of a letter sent by housing minister Matthew Pennycook to the company.
In response, Criterion told the newspaper that the use of the term “mass evictions” by the media to describe its attempts to remove hundreds of private rental tenants from their homes has caused “unnecessary alarm to tenants”.
The company spokesperson also said a third of the affected tenants have already left without anyone having to resort to legal proceedings: “These were tenant-led decisions and we have supported them – they were not evictions.”
PS There’s going to be competition for the tax-evading Harry Potter shops of central London, after Warner Bros announced that an official wizard store will open on Oxford Street in the autumn. Will this prompt them to take a look at how their merchandise is being sold in neighbouring shops?
When you’re tyred of London, you’re tired of Lime
Over the last few months we’ve had a steady stream of readers getting in touch to ask: Who keeps slashing the tyres on Lime bikes – and why?
Parts of London have been afflicted for months by outbreaks of mass deflation of the rental e-bikes. The damage doesn’t appear to be a product of regular wear and tear but instead punctures that are inflicted with purpose.
Lime previously told us they haven’t identified this as a trend. But early Sunday morning, it looked as though a culprit might finally have been identified in one small area. The police were called to Nevill Road in Stoke Newington following reports of a dog walker with a bladed object going around attacking Lime bike tyres.
“Residents have been baffled as to why there are so many Lime bikes with deflated tyres on our streets, and now we know why!” said a local resident who posted a picture of the supposed Lime bike slasher in a local Facebook group.
Yet despite arriving within four minutes of the initial call, no suspect was located. The police told London Centric that officers found “no damage to any bicycles” but said officers will pursue any viable lines of enquiry should further information come to light.
Do you know a Lime slasher? Do you have any intel on what’s going on? Get in touch.
The council making Londoners homeless so it can house homeless Londoners
By Polly Smythe
In the final weeks before the government bans no-fault evictions, there have been high-profile examples of London’s private renters being ejected from their homes, most notably by Asif Aziz’s Criterion Capital.
But in a dark twist, one London council is contributing to the problem by indirectly evicting dozens of longstanding residents from a block of flats so it can use their homes to house homeless Londoners from another part of the city.
Private renters in Garden Court, a collection of 32 flats overlooking the gates of Kew Gardens in south west London, were recently given two months’ notice to leave their homes. Their landlord has struck a £16m deal to sell the block of flats to Labour-run Westminster Council for use as temporary accommodation units – on the condition it was delivered without existing tenants.
One resident told London Centric that Richmond Council has now offered to house her “hundreds of miles away” from London, all so Westminster can use her existing flat to house their homeless residents.
“They don’t care about people like us,” she said of Westminster Council. “This will shorten my life, the anxiety and the hopelessness of it all.”
Other residents, such as Susu Myat, 57, and Justin King, 61, have been in their flat for 16 years. “Living around here, we’re all like a family. We take care of each other.”
Both had recently returned to university, but feared they’d have to give up their studies to focus on finding somewhere new to live. Myat, a gastroenterologist, is due to sit a specialist exam in the upcoming weeks. “My studies are not going anywhere. I can’t think about anything.”
Westminster’s Conservative opposition leader Paul Swaddle called it an “act of staggering hypocrisy” by his council’s existing Labour leadership: “There is no justification for throwing people, including elderly and vulnerable residents, out of their homes at two months' notice.”
It’s all part of the bizarre economics of temporary accommodation in London, where the legal duty of councils to house some homeless people has collided with the exploding cost of finding any temporary accommodation in the capital.
Whereas in the past councils would provide new social housing, now they’re panic buying existing blocks of flats.
Deputy leader of Richmond Council Jim Millard told London Centric that Westminster is creating “a revolving door of evictions” that pushes the problem of homelessness further out of the capital’s centre.
“What may well happen is that people who have been living at Garden Court for years will find themselves presenting as temporary accommodation to Richmond Council,” said the Liberal Democrat politician.
This is how, from Southwark to Lambeth, from Richmond to Brent, you might find your neighbouring block of flats being turned into temporary accommodation for the displaced residents of a different borough.
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