Squatters take London’s housing crisis into their own hands

In the shopping streets and housing estates of the South London town of Croydon, some once-derelict buildings are slowly coming back to life.

At a former school, peeling walls are getting a new coat of paint, and laundry hangs on a line to dry. Over at a disused youth centre, there is laughter in the gymnasium-turned-dormitory, and a vase of purple flowers decorates a scrubbed kitchen counter.

The Reclaim Croydon collective, a squatters group, has taken over disused commercial premises to provide beds for the homeless, saying it is providing a community-based solution to a broken housing market.

“The government is failing homeless people,” one of the youth centre’s new occupants, who goes by the name Leaf, told Reuters.

Britain has long lacked enough housing, but a 22 percent jump in private rents in England over the last five years has left growing numbers of people struggling to find anywhere to live. Housing routinely appears in the top five issues that pollsters report as the most important for voters ahead of Thursday’s general election.