A FAMILY are calling on Reading Borough Council to stop plans to evict them and 100 others.
Last month, the council said it was considering three options for the future of its Homes For Reading scheme. This had seen it purchase properties for people to live in, paying market rates.
Launched in 2016, the last home was bought in 2019.
The options being considered are retaining Homes For Reading, buying the properties through its Housing revenue account, or buying some to use for keyworkers and selling the remaining stock.
Its preferred option is to evict Homes for Reading tenants and absorb the homes into its housing stock.
Cllr Ellie Emberson (Labour, Coley), lead councillor for housing, said the properties would provide much needed affordable homes for key workers.
The Perry-Lee family, who moved into a home in Caversham in 2018, are one of the affected tenants.
They have four children, aged nine, eight, six and three, and are calling on the council to let them stay in their homes.
Rowan Perry-Lee, 31, said: “They’re saying we can stay until the tenancy runs out in August 2025. When we arrived here, we were promised security.
“We were previously evicted as a revenge eviction.
“It’s very disheartening that we have been given all promises to say that the council plans to take the home away from us.
“The letter says the preferred option is to reclaim and reallocate the homes to key workers.
“But myself and my husband are both key workers, my husband is a teacher employed by Reading Borough Council.”
Mrs Perry-Lee works in a pre-school and her husband Raven Lee, aged 33, is a teacher.
Attacking the council’s justification for winding Homes for Reading up, she said: “They need them [the homes] to be vacant to be taken into their housing stock. But then they are obligated to find us a suitable property.
“If it was as easy as what they are saying it will be, the key workers that are on their housing register would already have homes.
“It’s just been so backwards to evict tenants who can’t afford to move.
“We would end up on the council housing list anyway.
“A lot of the tenants are key workers anyway so it won’t be fixing anything.”
Mr Lee launched a petition on Change.org calling for the council to continue to operate the company as usual, and it has been signed by just under 700 people.
To see it, log on to: https://www.change.org/p/stop-reading-borough-council-from-evicting-400-people-from-their-homes
