I never planned to become a housing rights campaigner. I hoped to become an artist; I always loved to paint. But events put me on a different path. It feels as if I missed an exit on the motorway somewhere and now I can’t turn back.
It started when we moved into a housing association flat on the Eastfields estate in Mitcham, south London, in 2018: my father, my two sisters, aged 17 and 20, and 19-year-old me. Before that, we were in temporary accommodation: a half-converted garage that had mould and damp on the walls and a bathroom the size of a cupboard. We had been there since 2016, waiting to get a permanent council property, but the new place was no better. The carpets and wallpaper were decades old. There were cockroaches, flies and woodlice. The mouse infestation in the kitchen was so bad, we didn’t want to use it. The glass patio doors were broken, so the place was freezing. We had lights that filled with water whenever it rained, especially in the bathroom, which had no windows. It wasn’t just us; the whole Eastfields estate was dilapidated, but despite residents complaining to Clarion, the housing association, nothing seemed to get fixed.
In late 2018, my father was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and I believe the conditions of the house contributed to the speed at which he deteriorated. He died in January 2020. On the day of the funeral, in February, we had a massive leak from a pipe in the bathroom that caused part of the ceiling in the living room below to cave in. Everything became extremely depressing: trying to deal with grief, trying to deal with being locked down during Covid, trying to deal with work, and complaining and complaining to Clarion. No one came to deal with the ceiling until October that year, when they ripped down the old Artex and left dust, containing white asbestos, everywhere. Our slum conditions turned into a building site. They didn’t put up another ceiling until January the following year and there were still so many other problems they hadn’t dealt with.
One day, in May 2021, I got to a point where I had just had enough. I was working in marketing at my old secondary school and I’d spent all morning calling Clarion. A guy had picked up the phone and was rude and said they were extremely busy and no one was coming out, then hung up. So on my break, I went over to our house, took pictures of our living conditions and uploaded them to Twitter (now X). The post went viral. The story was picked up in the national press. Clarion repaired the flat over the summer, then issued a non-apology that read: “We apologise if Mr Tweneboa feels we haven’t provided the service expected from us.” It only annoyed me more. So I went around the rest of the estate, which I knew was just as bad, with two members of the residents’ association, putting letters through doors asking residents about their conditions. By the time we had done a full lap, my phone was already ringing: messages were coming through, pictures, emails, complaints. It was overwhelming.
It just snowballed from there. I kept uploading pictures to social media, more news reporters came and Clarion was shamed into doing what it was supposed to be doing. Then the BBC came down and did a piece and it blew up again. People from across London, across Britain, were contacting me, and they weren’t just complaining about housing providers and landlords, but about MPs and councillors, who really weren’t fighting the cases of their constituents. So I travelled around the country, going into constituencies, to hold to account these providers – doing the jobs of MPs, who were allowing housing providers to walk all over them.
What frustrated me was the lack of urgency about these problems. There was no human decency being shown. I was angry not just because of my dad’s situation and what he had to go through, but to find out that others up and down Britain were being failed in similar ways. I was angry to find out people were dying in their homes – from asthma, skin conditions and other illnesses related to damp, mould and disrepair. And I was angry to find out the people elected to be representing these individuals weren’t doing a good enough job.
By this stage, my following on social media had started growing and included politicians and MPs. I would go into tenants’ homes, then film and upload it, and within 24 hours they would be moved out, or found alternative permanent accommodation, even after complaining for years, in some cases. That shaming element can be very powerful, but, ultimately, those providers are feeling just a fraction of the shame that we, as residents, have had to feel.
Now this is a full-time job. I still go around and speak to residents; my inbox is still full. I also talk to news organisations. I’ve written a book on the housing crisis and I often go into housing associations and have a go at them about the slum conditions people are living in, trying to bring them back to their original sense of purpose.
So, I’m still naming and shaming, and I’m trying to keep housing at the top of the political agenda, especially in the run-up to the election. And I’m hoping here to share and air some of the problems I hear about from ordinary people in my work.
I have come to understand and appreciate how much of a foundation housing is for all of us, and how it intersects with so many other issues: poverty, unemployment, crime, domestic violence and homelessness. Decent, safe, affordable housing in this country has become a luxury when it should be a necessity. You cannot build on broken foundations. We need to go back to repairing those foundations, for ourselves, but also for future generations.
• This is the first in a regular monthly Opinion column in which Kwajo Tweneboa will talk about housing issues
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