Owen Hatherley on Slow Burn City by Rowan Moore
May 30th, 2016
“Both mayors elected so far, and the two major candidates this time, have offered the same solution, differing only in degree—a relentless offsetting, whereby the proceeds of runaway property speculation are proposed to be redistributed, usually by a legal requirement that developers build a percentage of “affordable” housing on or off the site, or pay for a bus stop, or fund some nice pavements and benches.”
“All of this relies on trying to inveigle the private sector into behaving more nicely. In a city where for nearly a century public bodies once directly built and directly owned thousands of high-quality homes and let them to people on low incomes at low rent, this is a staggering failure of imagination.” – Owen Hatherley writing in Prospect Magazine.
UPDATE 25/4/18: I’m not convinced the programme makers have correctly described the layout of the “scissor” flats in this block. If you live there or know someone who does please leave a comment underneath this article.
BBC/Oxford Film and Television/Lorian Reed-Drake
“I want to discover how the high-rise flat became the answer to Britain’s post-war housing crisis and why this modern way of living became loathed and loved in almost equal measure”
In weeks gone by the series has looked at the Medieval cottage and then the C19th terraced house. This week the final part takes us firmly into the C20th with concrete rather than brick construction and multi-storey towers replacing houses with gardens.
On Youtube here The Flat
269 Leigham Court Road – sheltered housing under threat
May 25th, 2016
Once again I find myself reading an important piece about social housing under threat, this time in Streatham, which needs wider publicity but instead is tucked away on a private discussion group. So I’m giving it a wider view at risk of copyright violation. I’d like to make it clear that what follows was not written by me but I agree with it as written and trust the judgement of the author.
This is 269 Leigham Court Road in Streatham, currently sheltered housing, with 45 flats that are home to 50 residents, all over the age of 60, all on secure tenancies. Despite being designed by architect Kate Macintosh specifically to house elderly people, a duty it has performed since 1975, in January 2013 Lambeth Council suddenly declared the estate ‘unfit for purpose’, told residents that it was too expensive to do the repairs and maintenance they had neglected for years, and declared the site was to be ‘sold as cleared land.’
Why Open Garden Estates? – extracts
May 23rd, 2016
Why Open Garden Estates?
The aim [is] to help banish the myth of council estates as concrete jungles that are home to anti-social behaviour and crime, and show them to be what they are – some of the last instances of community living left in London, and perhaps the only remaining places where the mixed communities we hear so much about in the speeches of politicians have a chance to survive the encroachment of gated ghettos of predominantly white, middle-class wealth.
BBC/Oxford Film and Television/Lorian Reed-Drake
“I want to discover what made the terrace Britains home of choice and why they’re still as devoted to these houses as their first inhabitants were well over a century ago.”
This week’s programme examines the development of the terraced house in the Liverpool district of Toxteth during the 19th century. As the city grew as a port, its population expanded both with the rural exodus and the influx of Irish migrants fleeing the potato famine.
On Youtube here The Terrace
ASH presentation to Lambeth Council – Central Hill
May 19th, 2016
I think it needs to be known how Lambeth Council behave when confronted with alternative proposals to their demolition plans to the estates in the borough over which they presently have political control.
If you don’t follow ASH on Twitter or are not a member of the Facebook group or read their blog you will probably not be aware of the hostility they are up against on a day to day basis in putting forward an alternative method of dealing with the housing situation in Lambeth.
Once again therefore, rightly or wrongly, I feel it necessary to publish what happened the night ASH tried to present their alternative proposals for Central Hill to Lambeth Council.
You can read about the presentation itself on their blog here:-
https://architectsforsocialhousing.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/ash-presentation-to-central-hill-estate-residents-engagement-panel/
What you’re less likely to read is what follows, as published on the Facebook page. Once again I don’t know if I ought to be doing this but I think you are entitled to know, if you have any interest in the housing situation in London.
BBC/Oxford Film and Television/Lorian Reed-Drake
“I want to go beyond masonry and mortar and come face to face with residents past and present, I want to understand how they lived and how they transformed buildings into homes.”
In a remarkable programme lasting just one hour Dan Cruickshank traces the development of a Warwickshire village beginning with its entry in the Domesday Book then through 500 years of history to the present day, studying in great detail the transformation of Medieval cottage life to the home comforts we have come to know by way of the chimney stack, glass windows and separate rooms for different functions.
On Youtube here The Cottage
Corbyn: The anti-semitism row
May 9th, 2016
Yesterday Martin Rowson published a cartoon about the London Mayoral elections under which “Press the red button” wrote this comment, later deleted by the Guardian. I agree with the sentiments expressed and believe the entire “anti-semitism” row was an attack cooked up by the Bitterites (so called moderate wing of the Labour party) against Jeremy Corbyn and assisted by Tory Jews in postions of influence. So I’m publishing it here because the Guardian won’t.
Abusive comments will be deleted.
ASH on the Housing Bill
May 5th, 2016
I copied what follows off the ASH FB page. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done I don’t know – but what I do know is that every word of it rings true. This is a fight for the survival of council housing in the UK and if you think that’s an exaggeration then watch the Housing Bill pass and the housing crisis worsen inexorably.
Well, that was worth it. Further proof that the fight for council housing won’t be won in Parliament by the verbal outrage of landlords and company CEOs, but on council estates and by the direct action of the residents whose homes are threatened.
We need to stop asking the people and institutions that want to demolish our homes to give us the means to stop them doing so, and start organising our own resistance on the ground. That starts with the political awakening of every resident to the reality of what they are facing, which is not a policy disagreement between Tory and Labour but a class war being waged by the rich.
I’ve said this from the time we first read this Bill and I’ll repeat it again now. This Bill is not ‘badly thought through’, ‘written too quickly’, a ‘hodgepodge’, or ‘half-baked’ – as the Labour Party and its press have endlessly dismissed it as.
It is carefully designed to do exactly what it intends to do, which is bring about the end of social housing in this country. The Labour Party should understand this better than anyone, as it has been, and will continue to be, its councils that will implement the Bill’s legislation.
It is this truth that we need to face, and quickly, if we are to organise mass resistance to its attacks, not in A-B marches to Parliament, submissions to the House of Lords, or faith in the Second Coming of J.C. to miraculously reverse what’s going to happen to council housing over the next four years.
These measures, which have wasted the time and drained the energy of what limited opposition to the Bill there has been, have only served to divert our attention from what is really needed to oppose it, which is collective resistance by the hundreds of thousands of residents whose homes will be sold or demolished by the Housing and Planning Bill and the mass estate regeneration programmes its legislation will enable. – Simon Elmer
Calling leaseholders on estates under threat
May 4th, 2016
I found this by ASH (Architects for Social Housing) on their Facebook page and it’s too important to leave there so if you are a leaseholder on an estate threatened with redevelopment against your wishes then read, mark, and learn what follows:-
Apart from all this mucking about, one thing that came out of the presentations and discussions, and which was backed up by advice from a barrister and a leasehold lawyer, is that collective resistance by leaseholders forcing Councils to issue Compulsory Purchase Orders against them is one of the most effective ways to resist estate regeneration and save the homes of all residents, leaseholders and council tenants alike.
It costs the Council shitloads, allows us to question the consolation process at legal inquiries, put forward alternative plans and argue that they better represent the needs of the local community, and delays their demolition plans by years. It also casts an uncomfortably bright light on the Plato’s cave of illusions in which the public is imprisoned by the press.
If we can show every leaseholder on every estate in London why they should do this, then the Tory Government, Labour Councils, Savills, and all the other housing associations, building companies and property investors feeding at the London housing table might start to think again about whether estate demolition really is the easiest route to a quick buck. – Simon Elmer