In the last week, SHAC has resisted three attempts at censorship by housing associations indicating that the sector increasingly feels threatened by organised tenant and resident groups. We found out that we are not alone.
Tweets Get Hearts Fluttering
The first attempt was by landlords unhappy at a series of SHAC Tweets naming senior executives appearing as guest speakers at the Social Housing Finance Conference.
The chief executive of four participating housing associations responded with a lightening speed that would put SHAC out of business if it were applied to dealing with tenant and resident complaints. Peabody, MTVH, L&Q, and Southern all asked for the Tweets to come down.
Their emails were almost identical, indicating that a template was in circulation, presumably composed by the conference organisers.
Our reply was to point out that the Tweets made no personal attacks, but drew attention to their participation in a conference discussing the financial hyper-exploitation of social housing. This was against a backdrop of rocketing rents, service charge abuse, persistent disrepairs, and complaints and anti-social behaviour handling failures.
We also reminded them that we had taken the information from the conference website which lauded their executives as star speakers. It appears that housing associations want the kudos of good publicity, but not to be held accountable for the very real harm their board and executives inflict upon people.
Being reasonable however, we suggested that they appeal to the conference organisers to remove the executive’s profiles from their website, in which case we would delete the Tweets. They didn’t, which suggests that there was no real concern for the named individuals, and that the point of their emails was actually to censor SHAC.
Hyde’s Sensitive Hide
Next came the curious incident of Hyde. Five SHAC delegates were scheduled to meet with Hyde chief executive Andy Hulme on Thursday 9th May. A couple of days beforehand, we duly sent Hyde our delegate list and proposed agenda.
Hyde replied asking for one of the delegates to be excluded. They did not provide any specific reason for the request, and claimed the matter was private. However, the delegate concerned also received an email from Hyde telling her she could not attend which she shared with SHAC. It is equally devoid of any rationale for her exclusion. She is not engaged in a Tribunal case, nor is she accused of inappropriate behaviour towards Hyde staff.
SHAC refused to exclude the delegate without good reason and Hyde cancelled the meeting. The full correspondence can be seen here.
Shaking the Platform
The third incident related to a public event at which SHAC and another housing activist had been invited to speak about service charge abuse. A few days ahead of the event, the other speaker was uninvited, but told he could submit a pre-recorded video of his speech.
The reason for the change of heart turned out to be that he was in dispute with his housing association – not an unusual circumstance, but he is dealing with a particularly aggressive landlord. The housing association applied pressure on the event organisers to remove him from their platform and they complied.
The speaker gave assurances that he would be representing his organisation and would not be making reference to his personal dispute. He even offered to send the presentation slides in advance, but the organisers would not budge. Although SHAC’s invitation remained, we stepped down in protest at this censorship.
A Sea of Censorship
The most surprising aspect of these incidents has been the sheer number of ‘us too’ responses we received from members when we shared the details with them.
A clear pattern emerges. Housing associations first try to fob off complainants and organised tenant and resident groups campaigning for justice. If that doesn’t work, they attempt to charm them into keeping it all behind closed doors on the promise of some future resolution that never arrives. If the complainant or activist persists, they resort to aggressive censorship.
The only way to combat such behaviour is to remain steadfast and continue building unity across our groups. Landlords fear any challenge that may grow into a tenant movement precisely because they know one is coming. They just don’t know where it will come from.
11 May 2024
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