Carpenters Estate Newham – Guardian
November 8th, 2012
From the Comments:-
7 November 2012 5:46PM
Why are you so keen on defending this ridiculous practice of allowing social housing in premium areas?
Council houses were built with the view of allowing the working poor to have access to half-decent accommodation (as someone brought up in a Council house I know they are often only half-decent). People invest in what they believe to be ‘their community’, family life and social networks are built. People grow old there thinking they are near their family and friends and that will help as they go into their twilight years. This is one scenario of a community.
Woodberry Down – Koos Couvée
November 2nd, 2012
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nicohogg/164474440/sizes/m/in/set-72157600403732490/
Woodberry Down has slipped under my radar in the sense that despite having lived just up the road for over a year, at Stamford Hill, in the 1970s, I have never walked around it or given it much thought. However, a recent article that came to my notice this week is above average and a wonderful description of the goings on there so I think it deserves a mention here.
#UCLStratford – Saving Carpenters Estate – 31st Oct 2012
November 1st, 2012
UPDATE: Keep an eye on future events UCLUSAVECARPENTERS
Last night I had the pleasure of attending a talk organised by the UCL Student Union about the future of the Carpenters Estate in Stratford, East London. By the start time of 1800 the lecture theatre was more or less full. Present were a majority of students, a few lecturers and three members of UCL management on the front row (including Andrew Grainger, Director, UCL Estates) both to see what they were up against (of which more later) and to answer the inevitable questions.
A write up by Michael Edwards is available here:-
https://michaeledwards.org.uk/?p=1135
and my own notes from the evening are available below.
William Waldegrave and the 1988 Housing Act
October 4th, 2012
UPDATE: – Jules Birch has written a much better article on this subject (or here) and Part 1 here or slow link here.
This is not so much an article so much as more a collection of comments but it tells the story of a man, his decision and its outcome. None of it makes pleasant reading. It’s time to reduce the Housing Benefit bill not by moving families out of London to the sticks but by starting a process of restoring capital grants for low cost housing and actually building places for people to live instead of shuffling families around the country like so much livestock.
This year there has been a dramatic surge in the number of families being housed in B&Bs, with figures from the National Housing Federationshowing a 44% increase over the past year. For families with children, the rise has been even sharper – an increase of 60%, according to the homelessness charity Shelter. Almost 4,000 families are now living in hostels, and the most dramatic rise is in central London.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/oct/15/bed-and-breakfast-families-crisis
Subsidy – misuse of the word
October 2nd, 2012
One of the words used by right wing politicians with no interest in housing anyone who can’t afford to buy a house or pay ever increasing private rent, is the word subsidy. It is almost always used in a perjorative way to suggest that the supposed beneficiary is in receipt of some favour, advantage, or benefit bestowed upon them by a benevolent society when there is no such thing as a subsidy being granted, only misuse of the word.
Right to Buy 2.0 by David Davis and Frank Field January 2012
September 28th, 2012
Right to Buy 2.0 by David Davis and Frank Field January 2012
This briefing written by Frank Field and David Davis is a poor and ill considered response to the crying need for housing in this small country of ours, England. Scotland and Wales have their own solutions. England deserves better than this mean spirited and narrow minded set of suggested policies to the lack of housing for those unable to afford to buy a house.
My strongest criticism of the briefing is that it lacks objectivity, it does not start from a level playing field, it is written from a point of view that takes several right wing prejudices as gospel and then attempts to find a solution to the housing problem based on these prejudices.
“We was all one” – London SE1/16 remembered
September 7th, 2012
It was the singing of Jerusalem that got me, accompanied by the camera tracking past block after block of newly completed modernist housing. Here I thought is an anthem to a brighter future, a better tomorrow, a brave new world. Then as the music drew to a close the camera zoomed slowly in on a notice board and I read the word Aylesbury.
Click the photo to watch the film
Housing Act 1988
May 9th, 2012
UPDATE: – Jules Birch has written a much better article on this subject.
Guacamoledave 9 November 2010 9:59PM
Just back from the Chartered Institute of Housing Eastern Region conference at Stanstead, where it rapidly became clear that the government is making it up as it goes along. John O’Mahoney from the Homes and Communities Agency was clearly out of his depth while trying to explain how the new regime of “Affordable” (i.e. 80% market rents i.e. not affordable really) would fund 150,000 new social homes over 4 years, and how that didn’t conflict with reducing the HB bill (answer: don’t know) and making people more dependent on benefits (answer: don’t know), and how that would be achieved at the same time as removing regional planning targets and putting control over new development in the hands of the nimbys, sorry, local people (answer……).
Blue London
May 5th, 2012
This is a sad day for London. The election of Boris Johnson as Mayor for the second time, made worse by it being only a narrow victory, when seen in the light of his support for the Conservative administration of H&F and his planning decisions in support of the social cleansing policies of that borough, is not to be welcomed by anyone who cares about the plight of council tenants across London.
This blog was created as a direct result of an article in the Evening Standard on Thursday 9th July 2009 highlighting the intention of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to rid the borough of council estates and their residents. In the nearly three years since they have gone some way towards this and certainly done little to reassure the worried that their intentions are otherwise.
Jon Snow speaking at the Guardian Open Weekend
March 30th, 2012
I have rarely heard so much truth about the present housing situation spoken in so few words, in one place. I wasn’t there but transcribed this from the Guardian video.
The housing crisis is personal to me because the first job I had after University was to work in a day centre for homeless and vulnerable young people sort of 16 to 21, and I’m still the chairman of the project now, 40 years on.
There’s far more sleeping in doorways in London and in Manchester and in Birmingham than I can remember, we’re back somewhere in the late 1960s.