"On Sunday evening I sat outside a pub in west London with a group of women, some of whom were crying. A man on a nearby table asked us why we were there, presuming a birthday party gone wrong, or a messy breakup had led to the scene. We were vague and cagey with our answer: “We live in a domestic violence refuge and we’re facing immediate homelessness and danger, so called a journalist for help” isn’t generally a great conversation starter.
Just after midnight that morning, the ceiling had collapsed in one woman’s bedroom: mercifully, she was visiting friends that night. The fact she has a condition that puts her at high risk of a heart attack doesn’t bear thinking about. For two weeks prior in the refuge, the sprinkler system had been leaking heavily: the women showed me the flooding they endured – ankle deep in some bedrooms, and wallpaper bulging with stale water.
Finally, the leak caused the ceiling to fall in. They rang the fire brigade and the housing association that owns the house and the charity that runs the shelter service. When the emergency services arrived, a firefighter told them that if anyone turned on the power, the entire building would go up in flames. Removing a plug from the wall, he swore as water poured from the socket. They were left with torches and barely managed to sleep: seven women, and six children between the ages of two and seven, crowded into the communal living room.
Their children are in play schemes in west London, where they’re building confidence after fleeing abuse and violence
Then matters worsened. The women were phoned individually by the housing association and told they’d be put in temporary accommodation – with no guarantee of when they would return – in Barking, 15 miles away: an hour away on public transport, even though the women’s doctors, counsellors, key workers and friends are all in west London. The children are in play schemes in west London, where they’re building confidence and making friends after fleeing abuse and violence. But worse: some of the women have ex-partners in Barking and east London, men who have told them that if they ever saw them again, they would murder them. One of the mothers was promised that if her husband ever had the opportunity he’d lock her and her son in the house and burn it to the ground.
Understandably terrified, they all refused, and were told there would be nothing else offered. By doing this, they were putting themselves at risk of being declared “intentionally homeless”, meaning they would be out on the streets with the housing association refusing to help.
The women are all intelligent, articulate, educated and speak multiple languages: model citizens on paper to the current government. And yet, because of their situation, they felt they were “scrabbling in the dirt, at the bottom of society”. They repeatedly said they felt like dirt, telling me I was wrong when I objected to them describing themselves as “scum”. They were treated as such by a system that bullies and harasses them and puts them in danger. Time and again I’ve heard near-identical tales of people having their humanity, dignity and worth stripped away due to homelessness and fleeing violence. Needing housing makes you extremely vulnerable: too often, being in need and having to rely on councils, housing associations and shelters in turn means you are treated like a criminal.
'It’s social cleansing': the 93-year-old fighting east London demolitions
Read more
The women lived in the same borough Grenfell Tower stands: to reach them, my bus had to pass the blackened shell. For a period it felt as though the tragedy had heightened public understanding of why housing is genuinely a life or death issue and brought shame on the nation, that we fail some of our most vulnerable time and again.
But the same situation continues to play out time and again: these women were at risk in the house, and at risk in the far-flung accommodation they’d been offered. Desperate to stay together in the small friendship group they’d forged, they had decided to fight: many others would have accepted the offer, and been placed in danger as a result.
With press attention, advice from lawyers who gave their time for free on Sunday night, and pressure from the MP Jess Phillips, whose experience in the domestic violence sector was invaluable, we were able to get assurances that the women would be housed locally until repairs are completed. But for every one of these experiences, many people won’t have a happy ending. Grenfell Tower should have shocked us into treating people with empathy, compassion and care when they’re homeless or in danger: instead, it looks like business as usual."