Manor Park
“We’re part of a bigger picture, supporting people into good housing, fair wages, equal rights… as organisations, we’re reaching towards the same goal.”
St Stephen’s Catholic Church is in the Parish of Manor Park, which sits in the East London Borough of Newham. Its large congregation (c.600) is both ethnically and socioeconomically diverse, with a high migrant population of West Africans and South Asians (particularly from India and Sri Lanka). The church is a member of TELCO, the East London chapter of Citizens UK, which is a national community organising alliance with a long history of organising for justice on issues like the Living Wage.
In Newham, there is an acute shortage of both affordable and social housing, particularly for families. The average wait for a council three-bed property in the Borough of Newham is 15 years. Within the private rented sector, problems include a high rate of evictions, rogue landlords and poor maintenance. In his time as priest of St Stephen’s Catholic Church, Father Sean has observed that due to the rate of families forced out of the area because of a lack of affordable or suitable accommodation, the church primary school has begun to struggle to get enough pupils. He said: “I have been shocked by the way many people are living”. Notaya, a young mother and member of the church, experienced some of these issues first hand when she moved to the parish in 2017, finding herself having to deal with a property in disrepair compounded by a difficult landlord. The Coronavirus pandemic only made the existing issues more obvious, as people’s homes became their whole lives. The borough had the highest death rate in the country, and public health experts linked this to poor quality housing.
In 2016, the church launched a ‘listening campaign’, encouraging members of the congregation to have one to one conversations in order to learn more about what mattered most to each other. From these conversations, housing emerged as the strongest theme. At the end of the mass one Sunday, around thirty people – including Notaya – gathered to take action on the stories they were hearing and experiencing, in the hope of effecting real change in their community.
As well as offering practical and immediate support, the group organises and campaigns for housing justice at a structural level, as a member institution of TELCO, using the tools of community organising.
The group became known as ‘Building Community’ – a small, diverse team of congregation members (including both those in acute housing need themselves, as well as local professionals), who work to support and seek justice for local people around housing. The group resources congregants and members of the parish to tackle issues they are facing through casework support, intervening with bad landlords, advocacy (including letter-writing and attending councillor surgeries), running tenants’ rights training, and on occasion providing practical relief such as providing spare bedrooms rooms to those who have been evicted. This work draws on the specialists skills of team members, which includes lawyers and a trained benefits adviser. As well as offering practical and immediate support, the group organises and campaigns for housing justice at a structural level, as a member institution of TELCO, using the tools of community organising.
In addition to the emphasis upon action arising from deep listening to identify the interests of its parish, several other characteristics of the church’s approach stand out. The group seeks to build community through relationships as well as practical action. This is evident in the story Notaya, who spoke about one family in the church who were nearly evicted. However, because of the group’s support and intervention, the eviction was overturned, meaning the family were able to stay within the community and have since become good friends of Notaya’s. Another family with a disabled child in unsuitable accommodation was rehoused in a ground floor property in the Borough following the team’s advocacy and have since become actively involved in the church.
Being part of the Citizens UK alliance has been an important part of the group’s long-term success. Father Sean explained that it was about ‘supporting people where we can, but also helping the Council to do the right thing.’ In May 2018, for example, the church was one of several member institutions at a Newham Accountability Assembly for Mayoral Candidates that had contributed to a series of ‘asks’ around more affordable housing in the Borough and measures to strengthen protections for tenants under the Borough Landlord Licensing scheme, which the church had been instrumental in fighting for in 2013. Since then, they have been working to build a relationship with the new mayor, working with her team rather than just asking her for change. This has led to positive but ‘candid’ conversations about how they build on her promise to work with a Community Land Trust to build homes. This is a form of community-led housing which means that homes remain affordable across the generations by linking house prices to average incomes. When reflecting on why it is important to campaign and organise for justice on this larger scale, Notaya said:
“We’re part of a bigger picture, supporting people into good housing, fair wages, equal rights… as organisations, we’re reaching towards the same goal.”
Alec James, the community organiser for the group from 2017-18, added that the one to one interventions with people who are really struggling ensure events like the assembly in Newham are authentically rooted in experience, whilst at the same time the assemblies themselves provide for these people ”a way of building their own power and realising they aren’t helpless”. Both Fr Sean and Notaya also said that having a community organiser working for the church on the project for its first few years, co-ordinating activity and holding the team accountable, was useful.
The church’s housing activity is about developing leaders and transforming people’s perception of their own ability to effect change, as much as it is about the change itself. This can be in seemingly small ways, Fr Sean said, like people standing up and giving a notice at the end of church about a meeting or telling their housing story to a local councillor. As Fr Sean said: “that’s a big thing for people… it changes the way they see themselves”. Fr Sean also explained how the church’s work on housing is part of a wider renewal of the church, and that by engaging with people where they’re at on the issues they care about, members of the congregation have been pushed to look outwards and encouraged to engage more fully in church life. At a personal level this has been true for Notaya, who has become ‘much more confident that [her] landlord is not going to abuse his power towards [her]’ and has highlighted that she now plays a key leadership role in the Building Community team, from organising meetings to co-ordinating action.
It’s also clear that this approach is sustainable. “Change comes when people are ready to drive it, it doesn’t work top-down, that gives it a degree of sustainability that other approaches might not have”, reflected Alec James, who although having since moved on as organiser, is proud of the fact that the group is still meeting regularly and taking action together.
Nevertheless, the reality of a team made up of many people in difficult housing situations and often chaotic circumstances means that people can sometimes struggle to attend meetings or commit themselves fully. Notaya knows the personal sacrifice which must be made to engage with this sort of action. She explained how: “I’ve got so many other things to do, as a parent, my job but I’m here, because this is like no other job… this comes from within”. Alec also described how ‘Building Community’ meetings would sometimes become sounding boards for individual struggles rather than a collective attempt to tackle ‘our issue’, which could be difficult.
Despite the best intentions of developing leaders and inspiring confidence, as set out above, this hasn’t always been reflected in reality. Fr Sean described how people have sometimes mistaken the group for a charity, expecting service provision rather than collective action. He also noted that not everyone in the congregation is on board, with many coming and going from mass without engaging with the group.
All of the interviewees, however, see this work as pivotal to both the wider mission of the church, and their own faith. “The dignity of each person, people’s participation in society, building the kingdom of God, these are fundamental to us”, Fr Sean explained. He went on: “If community, the visible witness to what we believe in, is being damaged, we have to tackle that”. For Notaya, she engages in the project because as well as her personal experience – in her words “not having a fixed place to live, feeling like you don’t have a community…it causes so many problems mentally, physically and emotionally – ‘it’s that Christ-like thing, putting others’ needs above your own and serving one another”.
Powerfully encapsulated by Fr Sean, the small, diverse team who make up Building Community, “hasn’t changed the world, but it’s doing something real and rooted and it has the potential to do great things, and to change us as a parish”.
Tips
What is most needed in this work is consistency – allowing you to follow through on actions. This is often difficult in church, where competing actions can get in the way.
Building a relational culture as the foundation for this is essential. This may mean not doing as much, but the one-to-one conversations which keep this sort of project going are a priority.
‘Churches can be good at talking. Action is the real test of whether we mean what we say.’ – Father Sean.
For more information, contact Father Sean.