Feeding Back from the Housing Weekender 2014

The Housing Weekender happened over the weekend of 26-27th April 2014, the first day happening at venues across London, and the second taking place at Moreland Street, EC1. The weekend was made up of a mix of events that included a bus tour, puppet show and cardboard-making workshop for kids, film showings, talks, panel discussions and actions.

Resources from the Weekender

Resources and Feedback – Events Page

Radical Housing Weekender: Sunday Videos – Blog

Feedback from the event, from some who attended, was that it was inspiring, useful, and an honest, constructive and frank discussion on the state of the housing situation in Britain. The Saturday events were witnessed and attended by people who were not usually involved in housing activism, from a broad range of backgrounds, classes and tenures; since the aim of the event was to reach out to new people and engage them in the debate, this was a great success. Many asked when the next series of events would be, something to be considered in following up from the Weekender.

The Sunday event happened in at Moreland Street, EC1, and consisted of a day of talks, panel discussions and networking. While attendance was middling, those that did come were from a variety of places, including council workers, activists, people working in Tory councils, and (as I was reliably informed) at least one from the GLA/ regeneration consultancy (ie working for property developers). The speakers, panel discussions and debates were informative and broad-ranging, with lots of participation from the floor and useful nuggets on what’s going on, what can be done about it and where to next. Worthy of note was Danny Dorling’s talk, and his prediction that the housing bubble would probably burst/ deflate after the next general election, leading to a financial crisis; good for wealthy investors who will clean up, bad for the rest of us as inflation, social cleansing and evictions will intensify.

What happens next is not clear, but one thing is for certain, this is just the beginning….

Programme from the Housing Weekender 2014

Saturday 26th April Programme

Sunday 27th April Programme

All links come from the Radical Housing Network site, whose homepage can be found here:
http://radicalhousingnetwork.org/