Residents of Evelyn Court in East London are putting pressure on their landlord – IDS – to improve conditions after years of neglect.
Video transcript
My kids had health issues from this long-term draft and moulding. We had cracks in my front bedroom. My son, the small one, had to go to Whitechapel to do a sleepover because we had breathing problems. You can see here part of the shoddy job they’ve [contractors] done. The estate is run down, really, this could be described as a slum.
Hi, my name is Romain, and I’ve been living in Evelyn Court over about 17 years. It was OK. When we had the first maintenance company downstairs, in house. It wasn’t that bad, but we still had the same issues with the damp. But the consistency with the flooding and the damping has not changed. And now it’s got even worse where we have to wait a long period of time to get repairs out to someone to come in and do it, or when they do come, sometimes they don’t finish their jobs.
So jobs are left unfinished or they don’t turn up at all. So those are things that we’re suffering from now.
My name is Frank, resident of Evelyn Court Estates. I’ve been here roughly for 34 plus years. A lot has changed, really. When I first came, 1987, there was more of a kind of community in the estate, so seem to like, know each other. We’re like each other’s keepers.Our children being good together.hat kind of, you know, community spirit was there, but which I think we have lost over the years. How did we lost the community spirit? Again, partly due to changes in the management of the estate, because round about between 10-15 years ago, IDS removed from site the estate managers, the cleaners, the contractors, and all those people that, you know, did different things within the estate. And that started to make life more difficult, because in those days, you know, you can see the estate manager knocking doors, going around, knocking doors, checking people’s welfare. You know ‘you okay?’ – not waiting for them to come to him to complain.
These days, we don’t even know the names. We don’t know which contractor is coming. We don’t know their names. They just come and they go and you can see here part of the shoddy job they have done. It didn’t used to be like this, when the former contractors were here – they did proper jobs.
The conditions here have been – I came here and saw it like this, but it has gotten worse because I think because there’s no consistency with the repair team, because they have changed. I think this is the third company been working here. I will definitely go into the action day tomorrow, and reasons why I’ll be going is because it’s for me and it’s for everybody and everyone in Evelyn Court because we have been suffering so long, and it’s been now affecting our health. Psychologically and mentally we are frustrated, and we feel that we’re not being valued, and we’re not being heard. We’re just being pushed aside and ignored. And now what I wish will come from this campaign or what we’re doing together: we need long term solutions.
CHANT: I believe that we will win!
The priorities is that we want: landlord that listens, that will listen, that are proactive.
CHANT: IDS, all we are saying is give us good homes
This post was originally published on The Canary.
