{"id":8439,"date":"2012-05-16T09:10:42","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T08:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=8439"},"modified":"2012-05-16T10:27:19","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T09:27:19","slug":"brixton-squatters-face-eviction-as-rushcroft-road-residents-get-notice-to-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/brixton-squatters-face-eviction-as-rushcroft-road-residents-get-notice-to-quit\/","title":{"rendered":"Brixton squatters face eviction as Rushcroft Road residents get notice to quit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Brixton<\/p>\n

The social cleansing of Brixton continues with the news that several long-term squats in at least four different blocks have been given notice to quit.<\/p>\n

Update:<\/strong> we’ve heard that they’ve only been given two weeks notice, despite the fact that many have been residents there for decades.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Brixton<\/p>\n

The news broke on this urban75 bulletin board thread –\u00a0Rushcroft road: notice to quit<\/a>\u00a0– with posters noting that friends from at least four\u00a0separate\u00a0blocks had received eviction notices, with something like 40 flats\u00a0targeted (8 flats in each of the five blocks).<\/p>\n

Until the recent wave of evictions, Rushcroft Road [and nearby Clifton Mansions] had been home to\u00a0a mixed community of council tenants, council leaseholders, ex-housing association tenants and squatters, with many\u00a0residents living on the estate for a generation.<\/p>\n

\"Brixton<\/p>\n

Lambeth Council has owned the flats since about 1975 when they were bought for demolition as part of an insane plan to\u00a0build a\u00a0motorway and high-rise council housing<\/a>\u00a0scheme in Brixton that would have unleashed\u00a0the tallest public housing development in the world, outside of Chicago.<\/p>\n

The plan was thankfully abandoned, and many of the properties were later occupied, with a strong squatting community forming – see the excellent article about how they formed a self help group in 2002 here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Brixton<\/p>\n

Lambeth intensified their efforts to\u00a0evict\u00a0the squatting\u00a0community from early 2002 onwards,\u00a0\u00a0with the occupants of one block of eight flats in Rushcroft Road – Elmwood House –\u00a0successfully\u00a0being ‘decanted’ elsewhere.<\/p>\n

In 2003, more squatters were evicted, with this emotive article fired off in response :\u00a0Selling Central Brixton to Yuppies<\/a>,\u00a0<\/strong>Brixton community under threat from greedy developers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Brixton<\/p>\n

On the 10th March, 2009, two more well established squats at Hereford House and Rosslyn House were evicted by a large number of police<\/a> (the photos above are all from this 2009 eviction).<\/p>\n

\"Brixton<\/p>\n

However, the biggest eviction of the lot was yet to come: that arrived in June 2011 when a regiment of cops sealed off Coldharbour Lane and cleared out the entire Clifton Mansions building.<\/p>\n

See the\u00a0photo report here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0read the urban75 discussion here<\/a>\u00a0(over 630 posts).<\/p>\n

It was a sad day for Brixton and a sad day for the local community.\u00a0A sign on the boarded up entrance flanked by cops and\u00a0bailiffs\u00a0said, “20 years community, 12 days notice.”<\/p>\n

\"Brixton<\/p>\n

With each fresh eviction of these long term residents, Brixton becomes a little less about character and community and a bit more about money, profit, greed and all that ‘lifestyle’ cobblers that nu-Brixton\u00a0developers and\u00a0entrepreneurs\u00a0like to peddle.<\/p>\n

A short stroll down down the road, a private Barratt Homes development<\/a> has utilised an ‘edgy’ graphic to represent their new Brixton Square development, with the name suggesting that we may be getting some sort of public square to enjoy.<\/p>\n

Of course we won’t, it’ll only be another semi-gated community, just like the ghastly one next to it.<\/p>\n

The real irony is that Barratt Homes are literally building on what was one of the best community spaces \u00a0Brixton ever had: the much-loved and much missed Cooltan Arts community centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I don’t think Brixton will ever see its\u00a0like\u00a0again.<\/p>\n

Read the thread about these latest Rushcroft Road evictions here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The social cleansing of Brixton continues with the news that several long-term squats in at least four different blocks have been given notice to quit. Update: we’ve heard that they’ve … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,17,193],"tags":[1191,84],"class_list":["post-8439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brixton","category-photos","category-places","tag-brixton","tag-squats"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/rushcroft-road-brixton-evictions-01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-2c7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8439"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8448,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8439\/revisions\/8448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}