63 Families on the Butterfields estate in Walthamstow are facing eviction.
A private business has bought almost two whole streets in Walthamstow, east London, and put the homes up for auction as vacant properties with the tenants still inside. A first round of eviction notices have been served and more could be just weeks away. These houses are not just bricks and mortar - they are our homes.
The Butterfields Estate is a close-knit community, with tenants ranging from London-born, raised, and retired locals, to young migrant families. Until the end of 2015, Butterfields Estate was owned by Glasspool Charitable Trust, set up 75 years ago with the intention of “Helping people out of poverty”. It offered relatively affordable tenancies for people on low incomes.
The charity has sold 63 of these homes to private business ‘Butterfields E17 Ltd’ (rather than social landlords) without notifying its tenants. This means that our community is not only facing further gentrification, advertised by estate agents as “a worthy buy-to-let investment”. We are all facing the traumatising prospect of homelessness and misplacement – all in the name of profit.
Sukran and Dogan Rashit have been given until 26 March to leave their home of more than ten years. “We don’t know what will happen to us,” Sukran says. “I have no money to put down a deposit on a new place. My husband and I aren’t young and we both have health problems. When you’ve lived in a place for ten years you know all your neighbours. My hospital, my GP and my daughter are all nearby. I can’t move somewhere new now. It’s frightening.”
Magda Krol has two sons: the older goes to a local school, and the younger starts pre-school in September. “Yesterday after his homework Johnny started saying ‘I don’t want to move, what’s going to happen to my bed and my room?’, and he started to cry. I was trying to tell him not to worry.”
Encouraged by successful campaigns like the New Era estate in Hackney, east London, we are determined to defend our homes and community. Please help us stop the evictions!
“The potential for a fight-back is there,” says Nathaniel Andrew. “But only if we all fight together.”
We urge you all to show your support for Butterfields Estate tenants by signing this petition to stop the forced evictions, and save our homes and our community!
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