When you threaten One you threaten All: Eviction Succesfully Resisted in Bristol

An attempt­ed ille­gal evic­tion occurred this after­noon at Uni­ty Home, num­ber 87 Ash­ley Road, St Pauls, Bris­tol. IT WAS RESISTED

Own­er­ship of the house is claimed by Places for Peo­ple, Britain’s largest hous­ing asso­ci­a­tion. Its chief exec­u­tive, David Cow­ans, topped the list of rich­est “social” hous­ing providers with a salary of £257,928 in 2007 (Every sin­gle pen­ny on the backs of the poor). Instead of pro­vid­ing ade­quate social hous­ing they work for cor­po­rate gain and through spec­u­la­tion with our mon­ey are feel­ing the pinch of the prop­er­ty mar­ket crash. This is a social hous­ing provider play­ing with pub­lic mon­ey.

Num­ber 87 is actu­al­ly owned by Places for People’s char­i­ta­ble arm (Places for Peo­ple Indi­vid­ual Sup­port), which is sup­posed to pro­vide hous­ing for home­less and the elder­ly. They plan to turn the major­i­ty of the house into pri­vate owned apart­ments. It cur­rent­ly is hous­ing 20+ peo­ple.

It has been emp­ty for over 3 years and squat­ted by a large num­ber of oth­er­wise home­less peo­ple since April 2008.

At 12.00pm today (28 Oct 2008), bailiffs act­ing for Places for Peo­ple arrived – short­ly to be accom­pa­nied by the police – demand­ing that the res­i­dents be out by 12.30pm. They claimed paper­work had been sent through to the occu­pants, but in fact no notice of evic­tion had come through. This was an ille­gal attempt at mak­ing peo­ple home­less and was answered with sol­i­dar­i­ty.

A crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple began to build in response to those resist­ing the ille­gal evic­tion and by about 1.30pm there were between 30–50 peo­ple out­side the gates on Ash­ley Road, with many many more inside, ready to resist what the bailiffs and police were prepar­ing.

Peo­ple took to the roof, occu­pied spaces in win­dows, defend­ed the doors – for­ti­fy­ing the build­ing. A ban­ner was dropped explain­ing: WHEN YOU THREATEN ONE YOU THREATEN ALL – for the defence of squats and autonomous spaces. Against com­pa­nies like Places for Peo­ple – Britain’s most com­mer­cialised, cor­rupt land­lord.

A stand off ensued and even­tu­al­ly by around 2.00pm the bailiffs and police depart­ed the scene. A beau­ti­ful vic­to­ry for sol­i­dar­i­ty in resist­ing the cor­po­rate takeover of our city.

This evic­tion threat is immi­nent and all sup­port is need­ed.

The res­i­dents of the build­ing have made repeat­ed attempts to nego­ti­ate a set­tle­ment with P4P but com­mer­cial gain seems their only aim. The res­i­dents ask all those who believe in hous­ing for all and the stand against gen­tri­fi­ca­tion to join them.

Squat­ters and res­i­dents togeth­er against cor­rupt land­lords!