When a group of teenage mothers were evicted from their homeless hostel, Focus E15, they took over a tower block of empty council flats in protest. Ten years on, they are still fighting
On 23 September 2014, protesters entered a disused block of council flats on the Carpenters estate in Newham, east London. The group, Focus E15, was made up of young single mums who had been evicted from a local homeless hostel a year earlier – and campaigners who had fought the eviction with them. When they entered the flats, they were shocked to find that some had newly installed kitchens and the electricity and water were still on.
“We were very angry,” says Jasmin Stone, one of the single mums, who was 20 at the time. “People would cut off their arm to have a home there, and more than 400 flats were empty in the middle of a housing crisis.”
