This Guest Blog from Morning Lane People’s Space (MOPS) explains their campaign for housing that meets local needs on a site purchased by Hackney Council for development on Morning Lane.

 

Morning Lane People’s Space (MOPS) is a community group. We came together in autumn 2019 because of our shared concerns about the planned development at 55 Morning Lane in Hackney, East London, where we live.

 

Our priority is to ensure that any development meets local needs and is based on meaningful consultation. In terms of housing that means building council properties that can provide secure affordable homes.

 

However, Hackney Council who own the land signed a deal with a developer giving them a 999-year lease and specifying only that there should be 20% so-called ‘affordable’ housing. It set no requirements for council or social housing.

 

The hundreds of expensive private flats that will likely be built there will do nothing to help the over 13,000 families on Hackney’s housing waiting list. Instead they will add to Hackney’s growing number of long-term empty homes, which this year has risen by 21% to 1,392.

 

On top of that, there’s 909 so-called ‘second homes’ where the super-rich can invest their money without paying the higher council taxes normally charged on empty properties.

 

When we surveyed 1400 people who live, work and shop in Hackney about what they want to see on the site, they overwhelmingly rejected the gentrification that new builds like this cause, with one plea to “Stop the social and racist cleansing”. They also overwhelmingly called for council and social housing: “none of this ‘affordable rent’ nonsense because it’s not affordable to those of us who are on low incomes”.

 

Help us spread the word so we can force the developer and the council to listen to the people of Hackney.

 

Sign and share our petition: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/morning-lane-people-s-space-save-hackney-central 

 

Read the report on our survey here:

Follow us on Twitter or Instagram: @MOPSCampaign

 

Find us on Facebook: MorningLanePeoplesSpace

 

Contact us: [email protected]