Owen Hatherley: A masterpiece on why we are where we are
October 3rd, 2013
“Labour local authorities’ increasing fixation with ‘decanting’ their council housing, in combination with their unwillingness to do anything about the rising rents and house prices that first gradually then sharply expelled their core vote has created the utterly bizarre situation of a party that, as Andrew Coley, a housing campaigner in Leeds, puts it, ‘gerrymanders against itself’.”
and should it ever be taken off the Mute server then get it here This Property is ConDemned
This quotation:-
“not in Burdett-Coutts fashion in order to bring light to darkest London”
is well worth following up for it was the Grand Daughter of the founder of the eponymous bank who enabled flats at Columbia Square, Bethnal Green, to be built.
https://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/EDburdett.htm
Or read the short version he wrote in the Guardian today (3/10/13) clearly derived from the one above:-
Gentrification council housing london architects wealth
From the comments below the Guardian article:-
Sally Gimson
Camden in the 70s bought up lots of housing cheap but that was because the borough could keep business rates then so had lots of money and astute councillors. The tradition has not totally been lost. In Highgate we have just built a passivhaus development at Chester Balmore in Highgate Newtown which will be half council half private – and is the biggest passivehaus residential development in the UK. There is no heating and so it eliminates fuel costs for tenants who live there.
Founder of passivhaus visits groundbreaking new Camden Council homes
Camden is also developing its land to build new council housing with private housing on the same site which will pay for it – both to the same spec. The replacement development for Bacton Low Rise in Gospel Oak is a good example of this. This doesn’t really solve the problem of the disappearing middle in Camden though. We have estimated that to live here in the private rental sector with two children you would have to have an income of £70,000 a year. You can see some of our thoughts on what to do about housing for that middle in our Equality Taskforce Report
Camden equality taskforce (link fails)
Link to comment:-
https://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-permalink/27603693