Hackney residents seek a new era for affordable rent

By John Watts

Residents of the New Era Estate in Hoxton held a family-led demonstration with their supporters on 1 December, calling on Westbrook Partners to keep rents affordable, following their recent purchase of the property. Families living on the estate say that are at risk of being made homeless by the proposed treble rent increases.

The protest began outside the Westbrook Partners offices in Berkley Square, Mayfair where they held a rally, before walking to Downing Street to hand in a 300,000 signature petition.

The New Era Estate in Hoxton has a history of affordable housing and is home to 93 families, many of whom have lives there for generations. Linsey Garett, chairwoman of the New Era residents association and a young mother who works for the NHS, said: “My parents live on this estate too. There are families like mine who have this area in their blood.”

The treatment of the New Era Estate residents by Westbrook Partners has again raised the issue of gentrification in the capital. Jules Pipe, the Mayor of Hackney recently said that the treatment of the New Era Estate tenants is unfair and that the proposed rent increases are ‘tearing the heart out of Hoxton’.

Their story has come to represent the plight of low-income Londoners in the face of huge rent hikes, cuts to housing benefit and the insatiable appetite of foreign investors for London properties, pushing house prices well out of reach for local families.

The steep rise in house prices in London has seen rapid social and economic change over the last decade. Property prices this year alone have risen by 20%, whilst wages have drastically failed to keep pace. The National Housing Federation has warned that you’ll now need to earn more than £100,000 a year to afford a typical 80% mortgage in London.

Long-standing communities are being torn apart in what many people at the protest said was an outrage. An elderly lady attending the protest, who didn’t wish to be named, said that she had two daughters and their families living on the estate who were not able to come because they were working on zero hours contracts in low paid jobs and couldn’t afford to take the time off, so she had come in their place.

Russell Brand, who has been campaigning passionately on behalf of the residents and seemed to have been the focus of the massive media presence rather than the petition or the New Era Estate residents, again reiterated his support and the ‘awful way’ Westbrook was treating them.

The issue is no longer just something affecting the low paid. Key workers and those on an average income are also being forced out of their local areas.

When the petition was being handed in a chant went up of, “HOMES FOR PLEBS! HOMES FOR PLEBS!” which brought smiles to the Downing Street Protection squad. Even the police know that key workers like themselves need affordable housing if they are to continue to live and work in London.

As a Hackney-based business and social enterprise that works with long-term unemployed and marginalised people, Poached Creative and our writers are closely following the New Era Housing saga. Read former trainee Sam Hooper's recent guest post on In My Shoes and look out for our forthcoming feature in the next issue of The Pavement.

We were all born to shine

Jeanette Rourke

Nobody knows the importance of inclusion for marginalised people in the arts more than actress and creative Jeanette Rourke. Her life took her from living on the streets to making an acceptance speech at the BAFTA Awards for the short film she starred in:

“I never had any less value as a human being from being homeless to going up on that stage. I was still the same person with the same worth. We were all born to shine.”

Her personal experiences and long working history with St. Mungo’s Broadway inspired her to approach them in January to set up a weekly Wellbeing Day, to give people with experiences of homelessness the opportunity to get involved in the performing arts.  She spent six months promoting the idea to organisations like the young Vic, the old Vic, and Streetwise opera to them on board.

Her persistence and dedication paid off, and now each week the Wellbeing Centre in Clapham hosts Wellbeing day which includes creative workshops, ranging from creative writing, poetry and music, to drama, costume and set design, by organisations like Streetwise Opera:

“Everyone is welcome here, you don’t have to be referred, it’s a drop-in creative space. We share challenges and achievements by increasing confidence and motivation.“ says Jeanette.

As part of Wellbeing Day, Jeanette will be putting on a show called ‘The Universe is Shutting Down’, completely produced by and starring people attending the centre.

The show will run this Christmas at the Clapham Omnibus Theatre, and performances will be free and open to all.

One of our own Big Issue trainees – John Watts - will be starring in a leading role! So head on down to the theatre this Christmas and support social inclusion in the arts.

5 tips for marketing your social enterprise

By Michelle Stannard

On Social Enterprise Day our Director, Jessica Smith, reveals the five steps to marketing success for social enterprise.

Make no mistake, marketing is hard work. It's time consuming, it takes planning, and it takes tenacity. In the social sector, you've got twice as much to shout about but which do you put first, your products and services or your social value?

The answer is: it depends. The first step is to understand who your audiences are and what they most value. Only then will you be able to tailor your messages to hit the right note, with the right people.

1.   Involve your target audience

Work out who your key audiences are. For social enterprises it's most likely they'll be your paying customers, beneficiaries, funders and supporters. Ask yourself who you need to reach most and why? At Poached, we love to bring in the type of people who will receive the message to create the message. Co-creation provides insight and builds authenticity. You can also find out more about your target audience quickly and cheaply through online surveys, stakeholder telephone questionnaires or engaging with them on Twitter.

2.   Build compelling stories

People are touched by other people’s stories. Behind every brand, project and organisation lies a story, and it’s the way you present this that is important. A powerful story told in the right way with the right link to your organisation will make for effective marketing. Think about the stories going on in your organisation every day and commit to finding some resource to capturing them in written case studies, photography and film.

3.   Flex your USP

How many times have you been told to find your USP? It's standard business advice but it's far from simple if you're social. The truth is, what's unique about you may not be a selling point! You're going to need to talk to a range of stakeholders to truly understand what they value that's unique about you - and it may or may not be your social value. Once you find it, use it. But be flexible - you may need different messages for different audiences and channels (see next point).

4.   Plan your communications channels

Jess is in Plymouth this week for Plymouth Enterprise Week, sharing the story of the #BuySocial campaign and expanding on these points in the  ‘Future Business: Marketing for the social sector’ on Friday 21 November.

It seems obvious but many organisations just aren't making the most of the various marketing channels available to them. Map out all the communications channels you have access to - these will include those you own, like your newsletter and website, and loads of channels owned by others that are open to you. Submit your news to Social Enterprise UK, Community Newswire and your local press and trade press. Use your networks and social networks to cross promote. Channel planning is an essential part of your communications and marketing plans.

5.   Empower people to spread your messages

The best advocates for your organisation will be your customers, beneficiaries and stakeholders. Give them the tools to promote you and watch your reach spread! You'll need to be prepared to relinquish some control, but if you make it easy for people to share your key messages, they will. Take a look at the recent snowballing effect of online campaigning tools and social media for the residents of New Era Housing Estate and how many people (and influencers) they have mobilised in their fight to keep their rents affordable. 

Big Issue Journalism Course starts!

Christopher. Photo by Gordon Chaston

We're thrilled that our Big Issue Online Journalism training course started last week, in its brand new home in the Deptford Lounge, South London.

The six-week course teaches journalism skills in writing and photography, and is aimed at people who are homeless, long-term unemployed or otherwise marginalised.

One of our new recruits - Christopher Ubsdell - is a regular contributor to online magazine the Pavement.

He shared his experience of the first week of the course with us:

"I came home after that first week with a sense of having completed something. A feeling of minor achievement. The next five weeks are going to be challenging but I'm looking forward to getting stuck in and learning how to improve my copy and other journalism skills. I think the course appeals to my inner need of story telling, which will only grow from here."

Read about his the rest of his experience on the Big Issue Online Journalists blog.

Inspiring libraries of today and tomorrow

By Catriona Kinney

Photo by Twechy

There’s a forest growing in Norway. But this is not just any forest – its trees will become the pages of a Future Library:  a special anthology of books to be printed in one hundred years from now. One writer a year will contribute a text – starting with Margaret Atwood - which will be secured and unpublished until 2114.

As a big fan of both libraries and Margaret Atwood these facts fill me with joy, but also despair that I will never get my hands on these great secret books (unless I’m alive and kicking at age 127!).

It might seem strange that Margaret Atwood’s book will already be a century out of date when it is published, and some have questioned whether the language change in that time will make it difficult to read. However many of the nations’ most-loved books have stood the test of time, like A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, published in 1843, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, published in 1813.

Pride and Prejudice and other books can be found in another new innovative library announced last month –and accessible to non-time travellers - Recovery College Library in Southwark, South London.

The library was opened for International Literacy Day by St.Mungo’s Broadway, a homeless charity, as part of their Reading Matters campaign. The campaign aims to improve homeless people's poor level of basic reading, writing and maths skills, as the charity found that 51% of homeless people they surveyed lack the basic literacy skills needed for everyday life.

Supporters of the campaign were asked to nominate which books meant the most to them, and the library is formed of over 100 of these nominations.

The best-loved books included The Lord of the Rings by J. R, R. Tolkien, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four was nominated by supporter Jack Davies because it's "a brilliantly detailed satire of our lives today, yet written some 65 years ago. More poignant today than any piece of literature or comment written now."

This goes to show that even books written long ago still have the power to inspire the hearts and minds of people today and in the future.

Here’s hoping that when the future library opens a hundred years’ time, everyone will have a roof over their head and the literacy skills to read the books.

Poached Creative provides journalism training to homeless and other disadvantaged people.

Food poverty in one of the world’s wealthiest countries

Image by epSos.de

By Yousif Farah

According to the UN World Food Programme, hunger is a major killer, with more fatalities than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. One might assume that food shortages and hunger are confined to developing countries in Africa or Asia. However, the reality is much closer to home. Increasingly, scores of people across the UK go to bed without having a decent meal.

October 16 is World Food Day. Set up by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in 1945, World Food Day sets out to raise awareness of the problem of hunger across the world, and bring about solutions to tackle it on a global, national and local scale.

In the UK, most of us take food for granted. However, following an unsteady period in our nation’s economy, the use of food banks has increased exponentially in recent years.

According to the Trussel Trust, the body responsible for running most food banks in the country, in 2013-14 food banks fed 913,138 people nationwide. These figures are just a snapshot of hunger in the UK as it does not include people who are too ashamed to use food banks and others who are cutting the size of meals.

Some 83% of food banks reported that benefits sanctions - when payments are temporarily stopped - had resulted in more people being referred for emergency food.  More than 30% of visits were put down to a delay in welfare payments. The second biggest reason, given by 20% of food bank users, was low income.

"We're often surprised by the length of sanctions people get," said Liza Cucco, the manager of the Hackney Foodbank.

Andy, a 47 year-old local unemployed electrician, visited the Hackney Food Bank when his benefits were stopped he says:

"If I didn't come here, there wouldn't be any food for me tonight. It's the system. But I don't understand why there's a gap," Andy was sent away with two shopping bags of pasta, rice, vegetables, biscuits and juice.

But food banks are not the only organisations tackling hunger in London. The London Food Board has interviewed hundreds of parents and children across London to assess the impact of hunger on their lives. Mayor of London Boris Johnson has set out to make London a Zero Hunger city by 2020. There is also a web tool – The London Food Map – to help those experiencing food poverty to find out where and how to access free or low-cost food.

Poached Creative is a London-based social enterprise that provides journalism training to homeless and marginalised people.

Tackling homelessness through ETE

Research has shown that over a third of people who use homeless services don’t have the formal qualifications they need to find employment or to participate in and enjoy full and active lives.  Numerous reports have highlighted the need for coordinated and specialist education, training and employment support for homeless people.

Housing support services have long recognised that housing in itself will not provide a complete answer to the risks and consequences of homelessness.  There is a general consensus that the availability of specialist education, training and employment (ETE) services has improved over the last ten years and have played a key role at local level, usually being seen as flexible and supportive by other agencies and people.

Homeless people often experience significant barriers in engaging formal education; the advantages are clear and include greater social integration, confidence and self-esteem. This would give a boost to homeless people who have a strong academic background but need to update their qualifications or to re-familiarise with them. Successive governments have also taken the view that paid work is beneficial in a number of ways; it provides a route out of poverty and it can address the sense of purposelessness, lack of direction and poor self-image that may be present among people who have not worked for sustained periods.

However, many studies have emphasised the need to tackle the problems and barriers single homeless people face in securing training and employment. Some of these problems and barriers include low education attainment, little or no work experience which puts homeless people at a disadvantage, problematic drug use and poor physical and mental health which renders them unemployable.

There are also homeless people that have a history of employment, have qualifications and can perhaps with help, make a move back into paid work relatively simply. In some cases they have complex needs and need a great deal of support before the transition to seeking paid work is a viable option. This means that there are unmet support needs, low levels of self assurance, a lack of interpersonal skills and also an inability to structure their time means they cannot immediately use mainstream services designed to help with job seeking, let alone secure paid work for themselves.

Research carried out by St Mungo’s Broadway suggests that people in this group may benefit from activities that allow them to develop interpersonal skills; emotional literacy, assertiveness and self-esteem, as well from programmes designed to deliver meaningful activity or ‘sheltered’ forms of employment prior to acquiring more formal qualifications.

From experience, front-line housing support workers have frequently voiced concerns that recent legislative changes have failed to recognise adequately the vulnerability of young homeless people and that individuals with particularly traumatic histories were at risk of being pushed out into mainstream programmes before they were ready.

That put aside, there is clear evidence that education, training and employment (ETE) services are beneficial to homeless people. The ETE sector has grown very significantly over the years and is characterised by innovation, diversification and experimentation with many different forms of service being developed.

Poached Creative has been working with The Big Issue to provide practical training in communications and journalism for people who are homeless and long­-term unemployed or facing significant barriers to employment. The training has been really successful and has seen some of the trainees regain confidence to pursue recognised journalism qualifications, write articles for print media such as The Pavement, The Telegraph, and E9 magazine. Some have found work as photographers.

There is a very strong need for coordinated and specialist education for training and employment support for homeless people by service providers. This is imperative as resources might be subject to constraint in future. There is a need for caution, in that it is logical to expect that wider labour market conditions will have an effect on ETE effectiveness.  Realism is needed when considering the scale of barriers that a minority of homeless people face in relation to securing paid work. With appropriate ETE and support paid work can be secured, it can help a person overcome the material and psychological effects of being homeless.