A council has been accused of ‘social cleansing’ after evicting a family because they couldn’t attend a house viewing in Stoke-on-Trent.

Monica, Luis and their three children have lived in the capital for the past 11 years and have had their own income for most of that time.

In March 2020 their landlord gave them a no-fault eviction from their home in Walthamstow, northeast London, and not long after Luis lost his job due to the Covid pandemic.

Waltham Forest Council provided the family temporary accommodation in the southern borough of Lewisham as it tried to find them a permanent place to live.

Last month, Luis had just started a new job in London, so his family were unable to go to a house viewing 180 miles away in Stoke-on-Trent as requested.

But that was enough for Waltham Forest Council to wash their hands of the matter, telling them they no longer had responsibility for their housing as they had offered them a place.

They were told to leave by June 29, but after a social media campaign by Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL), they were given a three week extension.

A review on the council’s decision is due on August 16, and lawyers for the family requested accommodation until that time.

But on Monday last week the council rejected the request, giving Monica and Luis just one day’s notice to leave with their sons, aged 10, three and three.

They are still there for now and the landlord threatened to get them out today, but lawyers are standing their ground and insist a court order is needed.

‘The family are still in there in their home but it’s all very precarious and stressful,’ HASL spokesperson Liz Wyatt told Metro.co.uk.

According to campaigners, Luis informed the council that he had a new job in the capital before they were due to see the home in Stoke-on-Trent.

Liz said: ‘What would have been reasonable would be for the council to say “oh well your circumstances have changed, let’s reassess the situation, maybe this offer is unreasonable seeing as you now have work in London.”

‘But Waltham Forest Council just went ahead as if nothing had changed and said the family must go ahead to the viewing in Stoke-on-Trent.’

Since the family’s story came to light, the borough has blamed the Government’s benefit cap – a limit on the total amount of benefit you can get depending on your circumstances.

It says it has to consider this when making offers of accommodation to make sure they are financially viable for families.

But as someone who had just secured a job in London, Liz says this wouldn’t have applied in this case.

She added: ‘This is a political decision by Waltham Forest Council, to forcibly move a family to Stoke-on-Trent.

‘We know a few other London councils do this. It’s social cleansing.

‘These councils know that these families will be very unlikely to accept these offers because their lives and communities are in London, and so they’re setting these families up for destitution.

‘We know that councils are under pressure, we know that it is hard to find affordable private rented housing in London.

‘The families in our group, they’re the ones who know first hand because they’re being shunted from place to place, surviving on minimal benefits because so much is going towards rent.

‘It is a minority of councils doing these very extreme actions of sending people to another city in the north.

‘I think in Waltham Forest’s response they were trying to normalise it. Even with the benefit cap it is possible to find suitable accommodation in London for families.’

‘This isn’t an isolated case, but rather Waltham Forest Council do seem to have a habit of forcing out their residents and really putting lots of resources and energy into defending these immoral and often unlawful decisions.’

She pointed to a case in November last year in which a judge ruled it was unlawful for the borough to rehouse a disabled man 130 miles away in Wolverhampton and that they had failed to consider his ‘extensive support needs’.

Cabinet Member for Housing and Homelessness Prevention Cllr Louise Mitchell said: ‘Our preference is to house every household locally. However, demand for housing in London far outstrips supply and we regret that it is not always possible to place people in the borough.

‘Alongside our duty to offer accommodation to those in need, we also have a duty to make sure Council taxpayers’ money is being used in a sustainable and reasonable way and that we can continue to provide the essential day-to-day services on which all our residents rely.

‘We must follow the government’s benefits cap policy when we make any offer of accommodation and we must consider the financial circumstances of each household to ensure the offer is affordable and sustainable for them.

‘The freeze on the rent we can pay under the Local Housing Allowance makes it very challenging to find affordable accommodation in London. We cannot comment in more detail on individual cases.’

A Government spokesperson said: ‘We’ve taken unprecedented action to protect renters during this pandemic, including increasing Local Housing Allowance rates significantly in 2020/21, which has boosted support by almost £1 billion, benefiting more than one million households by £600 on average over the year.

‘We are maintaining rates at the same cash level in 2021/22, meaning support for private renters is still substantially higher than it was before the pandemic.’

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