Wednesday 14 November 2007

About Hands Off Our Homes


Welcome to Hands Off Our Homes! (Leeds). We are a campaigning coalition of tenants, home owners, community activists, trade unionists, and university researchers based in Leeds. We started meeting in summer 2006 after the Save Little London Campaign organised a series of meetings with tenants and residents from across Leeds to explain what was happening to their estate and ask for support.

We have come together to campaign for genuinely decent and affordable housing for all, and to fight the privatisation of housing, gentrification, unwarranted demolitions and community destruction brought by so-called 'regeneration'. In Leeds, such schemes include: the East and South East Leeds Regeneration Scheme; the Swarcliffe, Little London and Beeston Hill / Holbeck Private Finance Initiatives; and the West Leeds Gateway.

Our campaign has the following official aims:

- To campaign against the wholesale demolitions of council and owner- occupied housing.
- To campaign against the crisis being experienced in affordable housing.
- To campaign against the destruction of communities under regeneration plans.

We support the Leeds Tenants Federation’s Right to Rent campaign, and the Fourth Option Campaign led by Defend Council Housing and the House of Commons Council Housing Group. We believe that everyone should have the 'Right to Choose' to rent in the public sector, or even live cooperatively or communally if they wish. Yet, since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, successive governments have sought to ensure that there is only been one option available - the private housing market. History shows that the private market can never meet all the housing needs of society; the present affordable housing crisis and present global financial meltdown that began in the collapse of the US 'sub-prime' mortgage market and spread to engulf the entire financial system are yet more reminders that we need affordable, high quality public housing as a genuine choice for everyone.

We have vowed:

- To give solidarity to those on the front line facing evictions and Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs).
- To campaign against all so-called 'regeneration' schemes in Leeds that imply the demolition of perfectly sound and affordable housing (whether publicly or privately-owned), and the further privatisation of council housing in a city with 24,000 people on the waiting list and almost no choice housing for the majority of people in housing need

We will act as a campaigning umbrella throughout the city for public and private housing, threatened under regeneration.

1 comment:

handsoff said...

Hi all,

This is our old website that we seem to have lost access to. If you want to see our current news and campaign against the bedroom tax visit:
http://leedshandsoffourhomes.wordpress.com

Thanks