Reading the Grenfell report last month, one of the most rotten things it revealed about the tragedy was the culture and attitude towards social housing tenants. In the years before the 2017 fire, the report says, many Grenfell residents saw their tenant management organisation (TMO) as “an uncaring and bullying overlord, which belittled and marginalised them, regarded them as a nuisance or worse, and simply failed to take their concerns seriously”. Seven years on, things haven’t changed. Time and time again as part of my activism, I go into homes where there are dangerous states of disrepair, safety hazards, accidents waiting to happen – and housing providers that just don’t seem to care enough.
I visited an estate near me in London in 2022, for example, where residents complained of not being able to open fire doors because they were sticking, putting their lives in danger. There was also literally water pouring out of light fixtures and electrical wiring sticking out of the walls, near where children were running around and playing.
In 2021, I spoke to a woman in Westminster, London, who had to evacuate her council flat one night because of a burst pipe. She went downstairs, holding her baby granddaughter, and saw water and what she thought was smoke. Thinking there was a fire, she stepped into the water, but it was boiling hot. It wasn’t smoke she had seen, it was steam – because of a burst hot-water pipe. She suffered burns on her feet and had to go to hospital. It was the second time they had been flooded in two years. Her daughter had reported the leak to the council a few weeks before.
Elsewhere, there have been too many instances of children falling out of tower-block windows to their deaths recently. It happened in Leeds in July 2022 and in Plaistow, east London, in May. In both cases, the parents said they had complained previously to the council that the windows opened too wide and were unsafe.
All this is on top of the general hazards and disrepair social housing residents have to put up with every day: the mould and damp, the bad electrical wiring (I visited a man a few weeks ago who showed me how all his electricity went off every time he turned on the oven), the faulty boilers that don’t get fixed all winter. I have been into homes flooded with raw sewage, or infested with vermin such as cockroaches and mice, with members of households becoming physically sick as a result; I have seen disabled or terminally ill residents living in homes that are falling apart.
Residents say to me: “How can we possibly be allowed to live like this?” How can they be allowed to live in these slum conditions that clearly put health and safety at risk, seven years after Grenfell? And why aren’t they listened to when they raise the alarm?
I have sat in meetings between residents and housing suppliers where the residents have been in tears, complaining they are being let down and not being heard. I have met residents pushed right to the edge, who tell me their living situation feels like “torture” and that they no longer want to be alive because they have been made to suffer so much. Their home is where they are supposed to be most at peace.
Half a million people will go to sleep tonight in homes wrapped in flammable, Grenfell-style cladding. All too often, recommended remedial works have become jammed up in disputes over who is going to pay for them, between housing associations, developers, insurers and the government. In the meantime, residents are stuck – either unable to sell their homes and move, or living in a building they don’t feel safe in, with no alternative. I have heard of high-rise residents who keep an emergency bag packed by their front door in case there is ever a fire, so they can grab it and escape as quickly as possible.
The most fundamental basic we teach kids is to “treat people how you would like to be treated”, but within the housing sector, even now, we have individuals and organisations who are incapable of living by those values. If local authorities, housing associations and developers are unable to prioritise health and safety over all else – or show residents, at the very least, human decency and respect – how can we really believe they are going to transform a whole sector and deliver what is in the best interests of people in need up and down the country? The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, and her team have a crucial role in tackling this rotten culture.
The government has to lead by example and be relentless and firm in its commitment to change the way in which we are seen and treated, especially by local authorities, TMOs, housing associations and developers. Seven years ago, we were promised change; now, we need action. Previous governments failed to deliver necessary change for the 72 innocent individuals who had their lives robbed from them at Grenfell. This government has the chance to deliver it for the survivors, their families and the millions who are still suffering across the UK, all of whom understand the importance of having a place to call home. If things do not change, it’s not about if Grenfell will happen again; it is simply about when.
• Kwajo Tweneboa is a housing activist
• In the UK, Citizens Advice offers a helpline on 0800 240 4420
• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
