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.
Some extracts from the latest ASH post:-
Tenants and leaseholders alike are beginning to realise that steering committees, resident engagement panels, regeneration surgeries, overview and scrutiny committees, cabinet meetings, and all the other consultation structures supposedly set up by the council to listen to residents’ opinions are in fact there to silence their opposition.
[ . . . ]
Open Garden Estates is an initiative by Architects for Social Housing designed to counter this lack of information. Piloted last year on the three estates we were working with, it was an opportunity for campaigns to galvanise fellow residents into resistance, publicise the struggle to save their homes, and invite people from the local community and beyond onto the estate.
The aim was to help banish the myth of council estates . . . as first paragraph . . .
[ . . . ]
Our current advice to estate residents, which has been arrived at by residents themselves through their own struggle, but which is supported by advice from housing and leasehold lawyers, 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 potentially save the homes of all residents, leaseholders and council tenants alike.
It costs the Councils considerable sums in legal fees, allows residents to question the consultation process at public inquiries and judicial reviews, put forward alternative architectural designs for refurbishment and argue that they better represent the needs of the local community, and delays developers’ demolition plans by years, costing them large amounts of money.
[ . . . ]
To this end we need to build a community of resistance to the attack on social housing we are facing. Only then can we think about how to set in motion a wider political movement to start reclaiming the public realm that is being sold from under our feet. This isn’t about a choice between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, as liberals too terrified to face the truth like to think: this is a fight between monopoly capitalism and its subjects. Resistance begins at home.
https://architectsforsocialhousing.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/resistance-begins-at-home-the-housing-and-planning-act/