The squatter activist group, Reclaim Croydon, was claiming a victory today after a judge threw out an application to have them evicted from the long-vacant “Fun House” site, under the Croydon Flyover.
House of fun: the former restaurant turned into a theme bar was closed earlier this year. Squatters moved in last month
Reclaim Croydon have turned the unused premises into an emergency winter shelter for the homeless which they’ve called ACAB: Autonomous Café and Bookshop.
But Basegate Ltd, the real estate firm that served notice on the squatters last week, had its case thrown out by Judge Graham Keating.
According to those who were in Court 12 at the Altyre Road law courts this morning for the Basegate Ltd v The Unknown Persons Illegally Occupying… case, “The judge decided that the papers served on the ACAB by the owner were so bad that they had to be served again.”
The case has been adjourned until at least next Monday.
“That’s great because it means the ACAB won’t be evicted this week and we can continue supporting the community,” a member of Reclaim Croydon said.
Growing support: Reclaim Croydon’s battle to provide homes for the homeless is receiving widespread support
“Reclaim Croydon had a victory in court today. While we will celebrate now, it’s only a temporary victory. The threat of eviction, perhaps as early as next week, is still there.
“Whether we win in court or not we will not stop reclaiming Croydon. Absentee landlords can chuck as many poorly drafted eviction papers at us as they want. We won’t stop occupying their buildings to provide solidarity and mutual aid.”
It’s increasingly obvious that Reclaim Croydon is stepping in and providing emergency shelters where Croydon’s cash-strapped council, under Tory Mayor Jason Perry, is failing.
Croydon Council could not answer questions about their provision for rough sleepers when this website asked them at the start of this month for which public buildings would be providing “warm spaces” going into the coldest part of the winter.
It wasn’t until December 11, after a week-long cold snap with nighttime temperatures frequently below zero, that the council’s propaganda finally managed to issue a press release outlining its pitiful efforts. What they have produced looks like something scrambled together as a hurried afterthought.
In total, around the borough, there are just 28 places offering some kind of refuge from the cold during the day time. The list is so shamefully brief that the council omitted it from their press release, and has buried the detail on its website – so entirely useless if you are living on the streets, or perhaps an elderly person struggling with heating bills but doesn’t know their way around the interweb.
The council’s offices, Fisher’s Folly, are not included on the list. Indeed, under council CEO Katherine Kerswell and Mayor Perry, the nightly soup kitchen run by charity Croydon Nightwatch has been forced off the sheltered forecourt outside the offices.
That absence of a warm welcome from Croydon Council is replicated on their list of warm spaces.
The list includes several churches, Selhurst Park football stadium (one day a week), and just one of the council-owned leisure centres (Waddon; although Greenwich Leisure are also opening up the café they operate in Ashburton Park).
The majority of the borough’s public libraries are on the council’s list, but most of them are in any case only open two or three days each week.
The most warm welcome appears to be from a volunteer community group, the South Norwood Community Kitchen on Portland Road, which is open for up to five hours on five days a week.
According to Perry, who is paid £84,000 per year as Croydon Mayor and lives in the £1million mansion near Lloyd Park, “We are grateful to all the local organisations who are opening their doors to support people during this time.” Part-time Perry failed to offer any explanation as to why his council is doing so little, and so late.
Meanwhile, the Reclaim Croydon squat under the Croydon Flyover remains open to provide shelter for at least the next week, and to receive donations of food, clothing and other materials for the homeless.
Read more: Activists provide shelter to 40 people who have been ignored by council
Read more: Reclaim Croydon’s free bookshop and café closed by bailiffs
Read more: ‘Disgrace’ as £110m of Brick by Brick homes stand empty
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SIXTH successive year in 2022 in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
The wonderful people of Croydon step up again when our politicians let us down.
Volunteers are great but it shouldn’t have to be this way. Conservatives and Labour are continuing to destroy our public services just so they can keep taxes low for millionaires. They are taking us back to the days before the welfare state, when people had to beg for charity to feed their children and the sick and the old were left to die on the streets.
Too many of the current politicians still believe that ‘greed is good’. They have forgotten, or never understood, that the people of this country believe in fairness. We believe that we should look after each other. We know that it’s wrong to make people suffer just to make others rich.
80 years ago we made a commitment to provide security for everyone in this country from the cradle to the grave. I still believe in that ambition and it’s reassuring to see that so many people in Croydon still believe that too.
I don’t care squatters are theives and stealing is illegal the property owners have to be paid for the property otherwise its completely illegal.
Every squatter is just a trespasser and everyone has the right to protect themselves and their property, squatters must not have any rights at all
If the council has not provided enough shelters then complain to the council don’t just steal someone’s property, it doesn’t belong to squatters and they can get hurt if caught trespassing if they are seen as a threat which is very reasonable as they have no rights
Squatters do have rights. Hence “squatters’ rights”.
They also have human rights.
And frankly, for a property owner to bleat about an incursion on to one of their properties that was sitting vacant, usnused, when there are people sleeping on the streets, where’s the bigger crime?