Common sense on Council Housing – BD
June 17th, 2011
What a breath of fresh air has blown through the dusty corridors of Single Aspect House today with the arrival of this week’s BD Online and a letter addressing all the problems of sink estates and other denigrated social housing. I have no idea whether the author is a housing professional or simply a former council tenant but Steven Bee runs Steven Bee Urban Counsel His letter speaks volumes about the approach required to return to the heady days of the 1970s when so many lived in council housing without the scale of the problems apparent today.
Bernard Crofton on housing, from the Guardian
March 17th, 2011
bernardcrofton -> Bellerephon
Of course not, but you can often blame architect for problem estates. Here’s a little anecdote.
As the most junior lettings officer, I was given the task of filling the empty block in the Stevenage town centre. It had one benefit to the locals: instead of being let to people moving out of London I was allowed to let them to local couples who “fell pregnant” with no other prospect of their own home. I was told to promise them they would be high-priority transfers when the child was three. Then Heath won the 1970 election, budgets were cut, and many of them were still there a decade later, but with more kids. Older couples suited to the estate moved out because of the noise.
The Chief Architect planned a tower block in each neighbourhood:”like a church spire in a traditional village”. My response that people don’t have to live in a church spire fell on cloth ears.
And an anecdote on architects in general. I attended a course on residential densities at the Architectural Association. One of our test exercises was a disused dock backing onto a 1930s LCC estate. Apart from mine and a planner’s from Islington, every design submitted included a big wall between the older council estate and the new homes.
https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/28933440
Is the big society big enough for homeless people?
bernardcrofton’s comment 4 July 2011 12:03PM
It was deliberate policy of the Thatcher government to remove full security of tenure and allow rents to rise in the private sector,and to force council and housing association rents to rise in the public.
The result was that Housing Benefit “took the hit”. (I would say see my evidence to the commons social security committee 1996 but I can’t find the link for the moment). This was seen as an inevitable cost of forcing up rents. The neo-cons believed that eventually there would be a resurgence of the private landlord.
The same belief underpins the current coalition plans for “near-market rents”. The problem is that this time all the family sized dwellings are going to be above the benefits cap etc..
And the “flood of immigrants” around the millennium was a temporary phenomenon caused by the accession of the eastern block to the EU with full rights to live and work anywhere within the EU. I make no comment on the rights and wrongs, or losses and gains to the UK, involved in that treaty. I simply observe that the Accession Act 1996 put into UK law the Maastricht Treaty which gave those countries equal rights with other EU citizens to enter the UK. 1996 was the seventeenth year of a Conservative Government.
Recommended (13)
Where We Live Now – City of Towers
March 10th, 2011
For over thirty years I have lived with the memory of this excellent documentary City of Towers and just occasionally I have a glimmer of hope that it will be shown again. Today the page was visited by somebody at the BBC.
A visitor from webgw3.thls.bbc.co.uk (132.185.240.123)
arrived from www.google.co.uk“WHERE WE LIVE NOW:1:CITY OF TOWERS” 1-10,
and visited www.singleaspect.org.uk/doc/CityofTowers.htm
at 11:12:06 on Thursday, March 10, 2011.A visitor from webgw3.thls.bbc.co.uk (132.185.240.123)
arrived from www.google.co.uk“WHERE WE LIVE NOW:1:CITY OF TOWERS” 1-10,
and visited www.singleaspect.org.uk/doc/wwln.php
at 11:11:49 on Thursday, March 10, 2011.
If you have a copy of this film and are willing to show it, even as a private showing please get in touch. This film was a landmark of its time in revealing the inadequacies and destruction wrought by an over enthusiastic application of Modernism to housing and city centres and the history that was destroyed in the process. Christopher Booker was one of the first to recognise the damage being done.
UPDATE: I now have a copy of this film, read more about it at the following page:-
Destroy these vertical slums – Phibbs
December 13th, 2010
The Guardian article linked below and published last year, by Harry Phibbs, is in my opinion, ill informed and inflammatory rubbish. However I have chosen to select quotes from it and comment on them along with selected comments that followed the publication of the article, owing to the light they shed on the present public housing situation and the extent to which the Conservative policies have been responsible for it, and not in a good way.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/11/tower-block-vertical-slums
Another view on post war housing
December 4th, 2010
There’s always someone who sees things from a different point of view and while I may not agree with them I am prepared to take them on head to head so here’s the view from the “other side”.
newsed1
2 December 2010 6:10PM
Well, that’s what happens when the Left fiddles with everything.
As Family and Kinship in The East showed, the Left didn’t like working class housing being private and didn’t like it being handed – via the rent man – down through well-behaved working class families.
Many of the ‘slum’ clearances were nothing of the kind- ask Timothy Spall who used to live in a perfectly decent working class street in Battersea (from where I’m now writing) which was taken over by the local council and demolished never to be re-built.
Hammond Court in Waltham Forest – MAE llp
November 15th, 2010
Mae celebrates ‘overwhelming support’ for council housing scheme
15 November 2010 | By Ruth Bloomfield
Mæ has received planning consent for a new housing scheme on a troubled east London estate.
The scheme is for 43 new homes on Hammond Court in Waltham Forest, a 1970s estate rife with gang and drug problems.
The practice was awarded the scheme by housing group East Thames Group in 2007, but the project went on hold during the recession. It was revived earlier this year, and includes a terrace of three storey townhouses plus two blocks with a communal garden. The site is around half a hectare and the design of the new buildings mirrors the surrounding Warner Homes, built in the late 19th century as model family housing.
Alex Ely, partner at Mæ, said ‘We’re overwhelmed by the support the scheme received. It addresses many complex and pertinent issues of the moment: How to achieve good quality family housing at high density, how working with residents can help drive regeneration locally, and how we can respond to a historically sensitive context with contemporary architecture.’
Construction is due to start in summer 2011.
https://www.bdonline.co.uk/5009021.article
================================================
The scheme is an estate regeneration replacing a series of unpopular 1970’s buildings. The units have been designed to the generous space standards of the East Thames Housing Design Guide, Lifetime Homes (July 2010 revision) and aim to achieve Code for Sustainable Homes Level 4. Ten percent of units are designed for wheelchair users.
Housing benefit – the row goes on
October 31st, 2010
Sometimes a single comment shines out so clearly that it cuts through all the wordy articles that have been written on the subject since last week. This is one such, not that saying it makes the situation any better but it does make it easier to understand the implications of the ConDem policy.
31 October 2010 7:14AM
So when there is a well known shortage of social housing throughout the land they decide on a policy of pushing people out of currently available housing into areas where there is a shortage of social housing already. Thus making the problem many times worse resulting in increased financial, health and social costs whilst people are housed in temporary accomodation and bed and breakfasts which is the worse thing you can do to a family which is trying to get back on its feet again which will cause the state more in all sorts of ways.Some help this lot are neither to themselves or anyone else.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/31/london-housing-crisis-benefit-cuts
Park Hill – Urban Splash
October 21st, 2010
UPDATE: 5/3/14 Park Hill today Utopian estate left to die
Color Me Goodd! Urban Splash brighten up Park Hill Phase One
For a larger version of this photograph click the image itself.
Social Housing cuts
October 20th, 2010
Government plans to slice 60% off the affordable housebuilding budget and fill the gap by asking new social housing tenants to pay much higher rents were attacked by housing groups for hitting the “poorest hardest”.
https://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/20/spending-review-2010-key-points#Social%20Housing
Well sadly the writing has been on the wall since 9th July 2009 when Paul Waugh, then of the Evening Standard, exposed the policies of Hammersmith and Fulham council which became the flagship Tory borough from which the present government took their ideas and are now in the process of implementing them. It is not that we should be surprised it is that I am bitterly disappointed that in view of the opposition expressed they have not stopped to reconsider.
Boris at Broadway Theatre Barking 21st September
September 20th, 2010
Mayor of London Boris Johnson will be at the Broadway Theatre in Barking on Tuesday, September 21 at 7pm, with a panel of experts, to take your questions. The public debate will be chaired by Baroness Neuberger DBE, chairman of the One Housing Group. Panel members are Richard Blakeway, the mayor’s Housing adviser; Rachael Orr, Shelter London campaigns manager; Cllr Phil Waker, cabinet member for housing on Barking and Dagenham Council and David Montague, group chief executive of L and Q Group.
Call 0208 507 5607 for a free ticket.