Hostel residents evicted to make way for Hotel
A teacher in London has been left homeless for Christmas after being evicted from the hostel he has called home for 2 years.
Alex and ten other residents were given only a week's notice to leave Amity Hostel 41-47 Wimbledon Hill by Thursday the 1st December,
This didn’t leave Alex much time to pack his belongings while also working, let alone get proper legal advice, so unfortunately he submitted the wrong legal form at Croydon County Court to challenge the time scale and felt he had no option but to leave on the day the hostel closed. Residents were told that the electricity would be shut off that same day and it has just added to the residents’ anger at their treatment when lights were clearly visible in the building two weeks later.
The Amity Hostel, which was an old bank building, was in a deteriorating state of repair but for Alex it was home. “I have resided at Amity Hostel for two years” said Alex, “paying £650 a month with a letter-headed A4 page receipt returned to me each month (except very deliberately not the last receipt where they owe over £100 after my enforced leaving date), and would expect more than a week’s notice to leave as it is hard to find other accommodation in a week and I made room 214 my home and base and filled it with twenty years of research, and my belongings.”
Alex has done some research to uncover previous legal cases, such as Mehter v Royal Bank of Scotland, which have determined whether guests in hostels should in fact be classified as tenants and therefore have the same legal rights as tenants regarding eviction notice and repairs. Alex explained that he was not staying at the hostel as a conventional ‘guest’, “I had exclusive possession of my bedroom, washed and cleaned it myself, shared it with no other guests and was not required to move rooms for any servicing”.
Merton councilor Susie Hicks denied the council ordered the hostel to close and it appears that the decision of landlord Wallhill Limited to close down came as a surprise to the hostel and its parent company Amity College which also ran a language school in the building.
But Alex feels that residents have been let down by Merton Council both during their stay and since facing eviction.
“The council placed vulnerable homeless, often alcoholic men in the hostel in degrading and dilapidated conditions e.g. with a shower that had never ever worked and eventually had wires hanging out of it that failed health and safety regulations, with no alcohol rehabilitation taking place; and the fire brigade issued an enforcement notice over last winter closing the top floor for two weeks after a portable radiator started a fire in one of the hostel ‘booking.com’ rooms.”
“Some of the council's unsupported homeless clients wrecked facilities in the hostel: smashed-up the oven on the second floor, broke a window in a fire door rendering it useless for several months putting us in further danger.”
“At the same time as using the Amity Hostel as a completely unsuitable provision to plug the council's massive social-housing gaps, the same Merton Council crippled the Amity Hostel's Amity College operator with a business rates debt of between £50,000 and £100,000 pounds (let's remember Wimbledon's language colleges had virtually no foreign students during the Covid 19 lockdowns and Milner School of English has been wound-up)”
“It is my understanding that the council were paying £750 a month to put homeless people in rooms at Amity Hostel, whereas for a bigger room I paid £650 a month privately!”.
“We only got notice to leave in writing a few days prior to the eviction date and I am aware that three residents had gone to Merton Council for rehousing help on Friday 25th November alone, yet in the seven day notice period I was not aware of anyone being offered even temporary accommodation by Merton Council.”
“The council officer who visited the hostel for the first time around Monday or Tuesday 29th November refused to help one man who is a courier-cyclist, saying he had not been there long enough, and told another resident she should go back to Wandsworth. A few days after the eviction I spoke to another resident with a young son attending a school in Wimbledon, who had still not been rehoused and is still owed £600 overpaid rent from the hostel.”
“Another resident who Merton Council had directly housed at Amity Hostel says nobody from the council had contacted him to ask if he is ok or to offer alternative accommodation.”
When Alex completed a housing form in the Merton offices on the afternoon of Friday 25th November he heard nothing back until Councillors got in touch with the housing department on his behalf many days later, but he has still been offered no housing support. According to Alex “the officer appeared to question my delay of 48 hours in coming to the council even though I work full time at a school over an hour away and never chose to be put in this situation.”
Alex’s experience is one more example of the housing crisis in the UK today. The owners of the building were able to milk the tenants for easy money without investing in even basic repairs and maintenance to keep residents safe, and then simply throw them on the street to cash in on the profit potential of the building now they have planning permission to convert the hostel to a hotel. Why did the council place vulnerable residents in this totally unsuitable provision? Why did the council give planning permission to convert much needed housing into another luxury hotel? Why didn’t the council enforce basic health and safety standards while people were living in the hostel? And most importantly why is Merton Council not providing the affordable and safe social housing that so many people in Merton desperately need so they are not at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords? There are many questions that need answering and Alex is determined to keep pushing for answers.
If you want to support Alex in his campaign for affordable social housing in Merton contact Radical Housing Network at .