Housing campaigners are planning a march on Saturday (Pic: Guy Smallman)
Diana is one of 69 people in north London facing homelessness after Clarion Housing—Britain’s biggest housing association—served them with eviction notices.
Diana told Socialist Worker, “It’s a disgrace for social housing in London, with so much profit in their pocket and government subsidies—for them to throw 69 highly vulnerable, often elderly, tenants into the streets.”
Tragically, Diana’s story will be all-too familiar to social housing tenants in Keir Starmer’s Britain.
Clarion Housing has faced major scandals over severe disrepair, unsafe living conditions and neglected maintenance across its 125,000 homes.
But Clarion CEO Clare Miller pays herself nearly £500,000 a year. Her tenants have been forced to endure collapsed ceilings, vermin infestations, chronic damp and health‑destroying mould.
In a leaked recording from 2022, a Clarion manager was heard telling an employee to put up a fake fire safety poster.
Clarion has also been found guilty of severe maladministration which includes a four-year delay in fixing a child’s bedroom window.
Even then Tory cabinet minister Michael Gove had to write to Miller in 2024, rebuking the association’s repeated, persistent mistreatment of its tenants.
Diana lives in a flat let by Clarion to the Peter Bedford Housing Association (PBHA), which houses vulnerable adults in Islington in north London, and Hackney and Newham in east London. Before moving to a PBHA property, she had been homeless after leaving an abusive relationship.
Diana believes that people are being “intimidated” and “kept quiet” by Clarion. She explained, “I went to a one-on-one meeting and expressed my concerns about the way things were being handled. I complained that many tenants were in distress.”
Clarion told her that she would not have to move out until the autumn. Diana says, “They were counting on me being happy with this, thinking that I would think only of myself.
“But I told them I need more information because I am going to go back to my building and tell everyone.”
PBHA houses people who have previously been homeless, as well as people with mental distress and learning needs.
“Many tenants are in distress. There is a gentleman in my building who had a kidney transplant last year. He is currently going through rejection,” Diana said.
“He was told by his key worker at PBHA that he could go to a homeless shelter. I think this is highly inappropriate.”
She added, “It’s a really sad and distressing situation. Many of us had been given hope, the promise of a home. Now even that little sliver of security is being taken away.”
The Labour leadership pledged to protect that sliver of security. It promised to build 1.5 million new homes. But there are 1.3 million households trapped on waiting lists, surviving in unsafe rooms.
The government promised a £350 million increase in funds for affordable housing. But affordable means no more than 80 percent of the market rate—that’s unaffordable for most people.
Social housing associations are “not-for-profit” but they pay their executives hundreds of thousands.
Labour had the chance to curb the greed of landlords, and protect tenants and renters. But they chose to suck up to the rich.
Join the national housing demo, central London on 18 April, 1pm
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