Residents of a South London estate have held a protest against a housing association’s intentions to demolish their homes, claiming plans to build nearly 2000 homes in the area are “reckless”.
Last October, Bexley Council approved plans for housing association Peabody to build up to 1,950 new homes in South Thamesmead, 35 per cent of which will be “affordable”.
However, residents of the Lesnes Estate have staged a protest to oppose their existing homes being knocked down by occupying an empty house in the area.
The residents stayed in the home for three nights from June 8 to June 11 to highlight the volume of empty houses on the estate that could still be used for those in need.
Adam Turk, 50, said he has lived as a tenant on the estate for 15 years.
Mr Turk said plans to knock down the estate stretch back to even before Peabody owned the land, and despite his initial optimism, his attitude towards the project has slowly changed.
Mr Turk told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “One of the biggest issues that I recently saw in a leaflet on this consultation is that if they do succeed in knocking this place down, they only want to put a quarter of us back here.”
He added: “The chances are that a lot of us are going to end up either outside London, which then poses the problem of paying lots of money to get into London for work, or going into property that’s in another state that’s been left to ruin.”
Mr Turk said it feels like Peabody “doesn’t care” about the residents on the estate, and has been involved in the occupational protest over the past weekend.
He said he feels that tenants in social housing should have the right to return to the area.
He said: “There’s a chance I won’t be rehoused if they knock it all down… I’m then going to be into the market of privately renting and I don’t earn a lot of money, so I’m going to be financially displaced.”
A Peabody spokesperson told the LDRS: “We want to ensure the community can stay together and have offered all Peabody tenants and resident homeowners on the estate a new home in the neighbouring new development.
"Homeowners will be able to move at no additional cost, as part of our shared equity offer. By living in new, more energy efficient homes, residents should also benefit from reduced energy bills.”
Peabody’s website states that a ballot in 2020 found that 70.2pc of residents on the Lesnes Estate wanted the area included in Peabody’s wider plans for South Thamesmead, with 65.4pc of residents taking part in the ballot.
Johnnel Olabhie, 56, has lived and owned a property on the estate for 20 years and said he was approached by the housing association to purchase his property in 2016.
The homeowner told the LDRS: “They met me and what they were offering wasn’t very close to what I wanted. They wanted to buy and the process wasn’t too clear and it was kind of bullying.”
Dr Olabhie said that since the plans for the project have progressed, residents have become worried about the possibility of privately renting a property elsewhere in the capital.
He also said he worries Peabody has deliberately stopped maintaining the appearance of the estate in order to discourage residents from staying in the land near the Abbey Wood Elizabeth line station.
Dr Olabhie said: “They deliberately made here uninhabitable, to make it a discomfort for people to live in, just because of the Elizabeth line.
"They start making it uncomfortable to chuck them out, acquire the land and build more expensive homes for rich people.”
He added: “It is just reckless for you to put additional pressure on people’s wallets. The estate has people above 60, 70 and 80, they are old.
"They don’t know where to go and they are really in a frustrated state. That is how we quickly got ourselves together to say, ‘You know what? We want to fight back’.”
Several residents also live on the estate as guardians, a scheme which allows artists to live and work in areas at a subsidised rate.
An anonymous couple who have lived on the estate for several years said their contract means they can be evicted at any point with 30 days notice, with no obligation to be rehoused by Peabody or the charity, Bow Arts Trust.
They told the LDRS: “We’re kind of caught and squeezed in the middle where we’re artists on low incomes but we’re also not vulnerable to be on social housing because there is none.”
They added: “We are stakeholders in the community, we’re helping bring up the area. We’re making a lot of decisions about how the area should look and feel, but we’re not part of the future of it.”
The couple said decisions on the plans for the estate are made at a senior level by Peabody and the arts trust, and that information is often “grey” and rarely received unless it is “demanded” by residents.
They said the protest has also prompted a residents’ association to be started.
They said: “Guardians, homeowners, leaseholders, and council tenants can all come together and set up tenants and residents association where we’re all vulnerable. It doesn’t matter if you’ve bought your home or if you’re a guardian. We all have an interest in the estate and the community and keeping the community alive here.”
They added: “Our campaign with this group is to build a retrofit scheme, don’t demolish. It’s good for the environment.
"It’s good for social cohesion and the residents. But it’s not as much profit to be made, there’s no profit in retrofitting apart from a happy community. I think that’s the goal.”
A Bow Arts Trust spokesperson told the LDRS that their creative guardian scheme had been running in Thamesmead since 2019 and has supported over 60 young creatives who work in schools in the borough and assist with projects such as the Thamesmead Festival.
They said the details of the scheme are made clear during the application process, with licences being a standard 30-day duration.
They said: “Guardian schemes are not social housing schemes. They are temporary housing created to offer short-life accommodation to individuals in return for that individual looking after an empty property.
"Guardian schemes create a positive short-term solution for those individuals who feel they are able to manage a property and take on the responsibilities of being a guardian.”
They added: “We recently wrote to guardians living in three tower blocks in South Thamesmead to say we expected the scheme would last a further 18 months. At that point they would need to move home.
"We also offered all of them an option to remain in the area if they chose – we are thrilled to say that 17 of the 28 artists affected have taken us up on this offer.”
A Peabody spokesperson told the LDRS: “As a not-for-profit housing association, our priority is to provide affordable housing and support local communities.
"We reinvest all income into providing homes and services and last year spent £113m on existing homes as well as building new ones. Our rents were £679m lower than the market in 2021/22 and last year we built more than 1,000 affordable homes, the majority for social rent.”
They added: “The regeneration of South Thamesmead is already seeing us deliver brand new social homes for hundreds of local people, with the average rent for a 2-bed home being £101 a week. The redevelopment of the Lesnes Estate (phases 3 to 7 of our masterplan) has received widespread support from the local community, with more than 70 per cent of residents voting in favour of it.
"As with previous phases, we will be building high quality, energy-efficient, affordable homes for local people, alongside much-needed additional homes to help address the housing shortage in the borough.”
Bexley Council was approached for comment, but had not responded at the time of publication.
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