Last weekend a few dozen young mothers threw a party in the historically poor but gentrifying neighborhood of East London. There was food, music, and face paint, and then they went ahead and moved the celebration somewhere a little more clandestine—four boarded-up “abandoned” flats.

The mothers, who are homeless and all younger than 25, are part of a group called Focus E15, named after the hostel where they used to live. Focus E15 provided shelter for young people and parenting programs, but all 210 residents were forced to leave one year ago. Since getting evicted from their hostel because of budget cuts, they have been organizing against gentrification and for public housing.

The Newham council attempted to rehouse the women but would only do it outside London—isolating them from their friends and families. The area near the closed hostel was part of a “regeneration” effort during the London 2012 Olympics and has become more expensive.

Local government in East London has been turning subsidized housing—the type of apartments the women were evicted from, as well as the units they occupied last weekend—into rental housing. According to The Guardian, the mayor of Newham has said he wants 3,000 more rental homes.

After organizing and speaking out against their eviction, the women were rehoused nearby. But the group says the new apartments are in poor condition and expensive (around £1,000 a month, they told Vice), and their leases are short-term. There are around 600 empty homes in the area, and local officials are trying to develop more affluent housing, The Guardian reported.

“Have you seen the buildings that are being built?” Sam Middleton, who is 20 and a founding member of the Focus E15, asked a reporter from the Evening Standard. “They’re all for rich people. It’s disgusting, it’s disgraceful that you can tear a community apart for your benefit.”

At the party this weekend—which was a one-year-anniversary celebration of the initial fight against eviction—the women turned four boarded-up flats into a social center and open housing for other homeless people, Vice reported.

“People need homes, and these homes need people. We were all told there were no places in the borough for us. Well, we found them sitting empty,” Middleton told Vice.

“There are people sleeping on the streets in Newham and empty, boarded-up homes everywhere around here. They say there is no housing and they’re regenerating the area, but why do these houses need to be empty while they do it? The places have been boarded up for years. We’re just doing what the council won’t.”

Though they’re abandoned, the buildings seem to be in good condition—they have new kitchens, electricity, and running water. The group will likely not be allowed to continue to occupy them, however. The local government has plans to knock down the buildings and sell the land to a private developer, the Evening Standard reported.

“It is disappointing to see empty homes in the Carpenters Estate being occupied by agitators and hangers on,” said Councillor Andrew Baikie, a mayoral adviser for housing. “The tower blocks are simply too expensive to renovate and will need to be demolished.”

Expressing no patience for the activists, he continued, “Now it looks as though we will have to spend more money to get protesters off the estate. It is clear that on the Carpenters Estate, the needs of the wider people of Newham are being ignored for the sake of petty, expensive stunts.”