Heygate – in response to Dave Hill
February 28th, 2013
The real question when considering how the London estates should be “regenerated” if that’s the word (it used to be) is how this ought to be funded and on whose behalf. There was a time when the borough or shire (outside London) would employ their own architects, quantity surveyors, civil engineers, clerk of works and direct labour force and just get on with it. In London of course it would have been the LCC and later the GLC. Those days may have gone in most cases but we need them back.
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.
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.
“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
Because I care about housing
May 16th, 2012
Those of you who count yourselves among my regulars, and there are a few, will be aware of the subtitle that graced this page for nearly three years. It used to say “because I care about housing and hate single aspect flats”.
Last Saturday (12th May) I was invited to join a DoCoMoMo walk around South London during the course of which we visited Lambeth Towers and some maisonettes at Cotton Gardens just along from the Imperial War Museum, among many other buildings..
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……).
Rebuilding Britain for the Baby Boomers
November 26th, 2011
Maxwell Hutchinson analyses the rebuilding of post-war Britain through unique and exclusive archive interviews on the 50th anniversary of the emblematic Parkhill Flats.
An excellent programme from the series Archive on 4 of which the history of Park Hill flats in Sheffield formed the backbone, while finding time to branch off and talk about Robin Hood Gardens in East London, and the World’s End Chelsea, all against a background of the whole post war reconstruction effort.
“The right to buy council homes remains iniquitous”
November 23rd, 2011
I do love my readers. So often somebody will type something into Google which sums up the situation better than I have so far and either leads me on to new knowledge or summarises a situation very well. Such is the above (from Norwich I think). If it was you, thank you and I hope you enjoyed reading through the long exchange between myself and Mizzentop the other day at https://www.singleaspect.org.uk/?p=9450