This quote from Frederick Douglas, who escaped enslavement and committed his life to abolishing the slave trade, is a pillar of our community organising model. We reference it regularly with people who are fighting for their rights. Our community organising starts with the people who need the change answering questions together - What is the problem? Who has power? What can they do? What is our demand? How can we make change happen?

We frame a person’s engagement with state power within existing human rights and equality obligations. Technically it is the job of Ministers, Civil Servants, MPs, Councillors, MLAs, Chief Executives etc. to deliver on these obligations. So what, says you? Human rights are hardly a priority and the systems in place to manage the many grievances of our growing population do not provide effective remedies.

So, who cares about the law? Who cares about human rights and equality? People who have no home. They recognise the absence of rights in the daily indignity they face.

Since January homeless families have been testing power with something different. In Take Back the City community housing clinics people living in hostels and hotels and at the mercy of powerful landlords are documenting what is happening to them, supporting each other to take collective action and monitoring how power responds. Their complaints are directed at Chief Executives and the Minister for Communities, Gordon Lyons MLA because no one else has more power to address the lack of homes at the heart of every other symptom of our growing housing crisis. The most recent figures tell us that 86,239 people are now on the social housing waiting list. 62% have been officially recognised as homeless. The state – the Ministers and the Chief Executives – have failed to deliver more than an average of 1000 units a year for more than a decade.

Homeless families’ collective complaints, combined with requests for information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act and complemented by public actions to hold power to account, are reasonable demands, rooted in existing law. They trigger various state responsibilities and investigations and can lead to litigation or public protest if no remedy is found. This is healthy democratic practice in action.

Some families, who have written a detailed formal complaint and emailed it directly to the Housing Minister’s own inbox, with supportive evidence - are being told to fill in additional forms to explain their situation again before any further action will be taken; “Computer says NO!” PPR is getting phone calls from landlords who are upset that we have created new software to enable residents to complain more efficiently. In other cases, people are being threatened with eviction and dragged through the courts.

The difference in response from landlords when letters arrive on the desk of the Minister and Chief Executives reveals the chaos in the system. In a few short weeks - three families have been rehoused. Others threatened with imminent eviction have been given a stay of execution. Some have not even had a written acknowledgment that their complaint has been received – a breach of complaints policy. Others are being called on the phone by panicked housing officers asking them to withdraw complaints, effectively to end the paper trail. Some families, who have written a detailed formal complaint and emailed it directly to the Housing Minister’s own inbox, with supportive evidence - are being told to fill in additional forms to explain their situation again before any further action will be taken; “Computer says NO!” PPR is getting phone calls from landlords who are upset that we have created new software to enable residents to complain more efficiently. In other cases, people are being threatened with eviction and dragged through the courts.

This tells us what 86,239 people already know. The housing system is broken.

These brave families are simultaneously bypassing and activating the systems of government by ignoring the point where policies are implemented and engaging directly with the policy makers. There is no doubt that by demanding their rights they are upsetting the gatekeepers of the status quo. But as we know: Power concedes nothing without a demand, it never did, and it never will.

Click here to support Take Back The City’s demand for a human rights based housing system.