100 year old Ada Lewis House faces demolition - Single women face eviction from hostel that’s like home

Published: 27 August 2010
by TOM FOOT

A HISTORIC housing block for single women faces the threat of demolition and the eviction of its tenants, some of them vulnerable.

Southern Housing has asked dozens of tenants to leave Ada Lewis House by the end of the year so it can demolish the 80-room hostel in Dalmeny Avenue, Holloway.

Tenants have been told its owners want to sell the five-storey building to property developers.

The house gets its name from Ada Lewis, a campaigner for social housing who founded a hostel on the site 100 years ago so that single women could find a safe and affordable home in London.

Current tenants – who do not wish to be named because they are hoping to be rehoused – include pensioners, students and people with mental illness and disability. 

They told the Tribune how they had lived “extraordinary lives” in the building, some for 50 years. One woman said: “It’s my home, not a hostel. This is going to be an unbelievable wrench.”

She believed the housing group should have rehoused tenants. “But they are adamant they cannot,” she added. “It’s all very unpleasant.

“It’s not been easy living here for a single woman like myself, but at the same time it’s ideal for people like me.”

Another woman, who did not wish to be named, said: “I’m Christian. God helped me the last time I was desperate. I think he will help me again.”

Another tenant, a student, said she had been told she would not be rehoused by the housing group, which took over the building in 2000, and must now take her chances in the private sector. The weekly rent at Ada House is £80. 

One student tenant said: “If I have to leave I won’t be able to afford anywhere round here – I will have to move away from all my friends.”

Ada Lewis was the wife of Samuel Lewis, whose bequest led to the foundation of Samuel Lewis Housing Trust, which became Southern Housing Group in 2001. 

Samuel Lewis left the equivalent of £30million to the Ada Lewis Trust, a charity created after the death of his wife, a wealthy Jewish philanthropist who was concerned about the lack of decent housing for single, low-waged working women. 

The home in Dalmeny Avenue opened before the First World War and was rebuilt in the 1940s. For about 100 years women have used it as a safe base and a foothold in the capital.

Tenants, who share bathrooms and kitchens, were told at a meeting on Monday the building was too expensive to refurbish and they must leave.

The block’s women wardens have already gone and some long-standing tenants have packed their bags.

Two other Ada Lewis homes in London, founded at the same time as  the one in Dalmeny Avenue, have been shut in the past two years.

Southern Housing were unavailable for comment.