Autonomous Winter Shelter and the collective fight back

This morning we spoke to a journalist in support of Autonomous Winter Shelter who are currently fighting to remain at a disused convent in East London where they have built a resilient community resource over the last seven months. Autonomous Winter Shelter is a housing network and mutual aid initiative which is picking up the pieces where councils are failing. They have recently housed the Shadwell Fire Survivors when Tower Hamlets council evicted them from the short term emergency accommodation provided after the horrific fire.

We are in a situation in the UK where all forms of homelessness are on the rise. Inequality is sharpening and deepening. The response from the authorities is to put in a series of laws which reduce people’s rights. In such a context it is clear we cannot rely on mainstream large or small p politics for the answers. It is heartening that groups are organising and finding solutions in this crisis. We see mutual aid and DIY responses emerging in a few different sites and settings. Put simply we need more. And we need those that are active now to be supported.

Right now Autonomous Winter Shelter needs our support. The police are overreaching and should not be evicting AWS, who have a strong case that the use class of the building is not residential. (Which, for those who are not sure on the law, impacts on the rights to occupy the site).

AWS are not only directly saving lives through sharing space, resources and shelter, they are also showing up injustices in the urban fabric with the sites they choose and how they campaign around them. One site was a homelessness hostel owned by St Mungos, empty in the dead of winter. Other sites they have occupied have highlighted real estate investment firms that don’t even have a UK office yet hold buildings sitting empty in London, whilst the deaths of people experiencing homelessness continue to rise.

If I was a homelessness commissioner I would be thinking about how I could work productively with these groups rather than crushing the movement. After all, Autonomous Winter Shelter and other mutual aid groups are doing the work that health, housing and social care departments should be.

Jess Turtle, co-director Museum of Homelessness