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Homes for Health: The Public Health Case for Social Homes

Thursday 25th July @ 6:30 pm 8:00 pm

The Public Health Case for Social Homes

Join us for the second of our series of online gatherings to discuss together how health workers can join the fight for housing and health justice!

The so-called housing crisis makes the spaces in which we live damp, mouldy, insecure and impossible to afford. The housing system prevents vast numbers of families from simply feeling at home, and calling the place they live a place of safety. Austerity and the commodification of housing has turned the domestic into a site of illness, violence, precarity, insecurity, and in some cases death. 

We need urgent political action to respond to the public health crisis that health workers are witnessing. This requires rethinking housing beyond commodification and taking action to reclaim it as a public health asset. We need to reclaim housing for health.

It will take a movement, with tenants, health workers and all sectors of society working together to shift the narrative and end the public health crisis in housing. Join us to get involved with the fight for healthy homes!

In this second online gathering, we will hear from speakers about how health workers are joining the fight for housing justice and how tenants and communities across the country are building power to force change.

  • Medact members Dr Abi Secker, Dr Amaran Uthayakumar-Cumarasamy and Dr Isobel Braithwaite
  • Adam Gabsi – chair of Inclusion London and Harrow Association of Disabled people. Adam is passionate about Disabled people receiving the justice they deserve and wants to use his position to the benefit of all Disabled people, London-wide and beyond.
  • Laura Vicinanza – leads Inclusion London’s strategic engagement with the Greater London Authority (GLA) and supports DDPOs with influencing local and national government policies.
  • Greater Manchester Tenants Union – a democratic, member-led union, working across the 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester. They organise and represent members in the private and social rented sector and fight for safe, secure and affordable housing for everyone
  • Dr Abi O’Connor (New Economics Foundation) – an urban sociologist whose expertise centres on understanding the relationship between urban governance, local politics and the (re)structuring of place, specifically focusing on the impact of this on communities and areas impacted by regional inequality. She has a keen interest in democratising knowledge through grassroots movements.

Based on London? Join us for an in-person watch party at the Medact office in Pelican House, Bethnal Green! Just let us know you’re joining in person in the form below!

Homes should be a place of comfort, health and security. Instead, across the UK, homes have become sites of illness. They are rendered cold and damp by poor insulation and sky-high energy prices. They are insecure due to unaffordable rents, evictions, and poor-quality housing.

Cold, unaffordable and insecure homes are no accident. They are the symptoms of a political system that produces mass illness and deepens inequalities in both health and wealth.  The root causes are political—and this means the solutions are too.

At these online gatherings, together we will gain the tools we need to take action as health workers. Join the fight to win healthy homes for all, as part of the wider struggles for climate, housing and economic justice. 

In the run up to the general election & beyond we intend to get organised, fight for healthy homes, and win.