wemakeyousoundb
hopefully not gimboid
well, best of luck to any first time buyer for the future.
Brixton Clifton Mansions former squats - background, 2011 evictions and latest news
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ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I haven't said anything about "open market price", Rushy. You did.
I'm talking about a decent return that isn't pennies in the pound of the actual value.
As for the council needing the cash, do you think they should liquidate their land-bank too? perhaps have a "spring-clean" of any saleable assets?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
They'll need more than luck, at those average prices. They'll need a fucking miracle.
When tenement blocks were going up in Brixton around late 19th -early 20th century, Clifton Mansions, I think was probably low-end, low-income, and not a patch on housing stock in Rushcroft Road. The courtyard is nice, but many of the flats are u-shaped around a stairwell with no corridor, and therefore, I think, don't obey building regs. The rooms are smallish and the fabric of the building is in a state. Because there was an opportunity to buy as a co-op I thought about how they might be converted and came to the conclusion that a lot of expensive hacking-about would be necessary. I would knock them down and start again.
Rushy
basically a scrotum
Rushy
basically a scrotum
That's interesting. The houses on Tunstall Road built around the same time were also originally non-self contained flats, one on each floor, around a staircase.
Despite being called Mansion Flats, the ones in Rosslyn and Hereford are far smaller than than their name suggests. Quite a few of the 2 beds are about 45sqm - these days that is the absolute minimum for a 1 bed flat. I have only ever been in two on the other side of the street. They seem to be quite a lot bigger.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
I admire your perserverance with Rushy and LT.
A point of info. Clifton Mansions is I believe a "Long Term Cycle Void". Its part of the Housing stock rather than a piece of land that the Council owns. An extra complication is that Lambeth has set up ALMOs in Lambeth. So Clifton Mansions probably comes under Lambeth Living control.
Its not something that I understand fully. Whether its Lambeth Living ( the ALMO) or the Council directly who would dispose of or retain this property.
I have been told that Lambeth loses out by retaining property its not using. Its expected to use or dispose of Housing assets to be seen by central Government to be good manager of its stock. However I dont know all the ins and out of LA housing.
As you say the HRA is being radically changed by this Government.
As for selling there saleable assets they been doing this for a while. School sites and the Street Council housing they own. The Council dont like managing street properties (often houses with gardens).
I would guess that now the Council have access to Clifton Mansions they are getting there surveyors in. The Council have a formula. If a property costs more than £X to rehab then its put up for sale or offered to RSL/HA ( normally at discount in exchange for nomination rights).
It is possibly for a Council to let other affordable housing providers to develop/ rehab housing in exchange for nomination rights. There is a formula for this.
In case of Clifton Mansions I would think that if its kept as housing ( either by developer or other provider) the only bit that would remain would be street frontage. The rest would be new build. As was done to the flats on the corner of Roseberry Avenue and Grays Inn road.
As Rushy say and I have also been told house and land prices in the North of the Borough have held up despite recession. London is unique. Having bailed out the Fat Cats in the City central London house and land prices have not fallen that much. Its not the market its the fact that the City has been subsided by Government that has kept house prices up.
Local authorities are under a lot of pressure from Pickles etc to make saving and be more "efficient". Unlike the City/Bankers.
Also rental sector in central London is doing quite nicely. So small developers and Buy to Let merchants are still on the look out for property. The Olympics is coming up and the City needs places to rent. There has already been concern that the Council has been putting properties up for auction. The Buy to let merchants and small developers have got bargains at auctions. If getting a good price is the aim of selling properties then selling them at an auction isnt the way to get it. But confirms to what the Council is allowed to do. The OMV at an auction is whatever it goes for at that auction.
Affordable housing is very much low on politicians agenda imo. its not a vote winner or loser like the NHS is. Middle ground voters are more likely to be home owners or have a Buy to Let portfolio. Crap really.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/stand...year-as-they-auction-homes-off-too-cheaply.do
To follow up my previous post here is Evening Standard article on the results of auctioning off properties. Its a bit old from 2009. Its been an issue for a while.
Lambeth council came under fire in February after a two-bedroom flat was sold at auction for about £30,000 less than similar properties.
It was bought by a consortium of developers for £128,000 with the intention of selling it on at a profit. The flat, in Cricklade Avenue, Streatham Hill, needed little more than a new kitchen and bathroom, with refurbishment costs estimated in the region of £10,000.
Six months later it has gone on the market with a local estate agent for £215,000, potentially making the seller a profit of about £80,000.
It is now under offer at the asking price. Jack Frankel, part of the consortium which regularly buys at auctions, said: “I realised pretty quickly that this was a bargain and I'm very pleased with the way this has gone.
just checked auction site and Lambeth are still using auctions to sell housing stock.
To follow up my previous post here is Evening Standard article on the results of auctioning off properties. Its a bit old from 2009. Its been an issue for a while.
Lambeth council came under fire in February after a two-bedroom flat was sold at auction for about £30,000 less than similar properties.
It was bought by a consortium of developers for £128,000 with the intention of selling it on at a profit. The flat, in Cricklade Avenue, Streatham Hill, needed little more than a new kitchen and bathroom, with refurbishment costs estimated in the region of £10,000.
Six months later it has gone on the market with a local estate agent for £215,000, potentially making the seller a profit of about £80,000.
It is now under offer at the asking price. Jack Frankel, part of the consortium which regularly buys at auctions, said: “I realised pretty quickly that this was a bargain and I'm very pleased with the way this has gone.
just checked auction site and Lambeth are still using auctions to sell housing stock.
wemakeyousoundb
hopefully not gimboid
and something to bear in mind: you can sell properties with the squatters included at auction
Rushy
basically a scrotum
Yes - off course you can sell them squatted. And they sometimes do so - e.g. Bankton Road quite recently. On Hubert Grove they currently have a squatted property for sale and yet removed the squatters prior to sale of the property immediately next door. They generally achieve less cash if selling with squatters so I do not understand why they are inconsistent about it. At the end of the day a buyer of a squatted property will want to see all the information the council has to prove possession. If the council already has that info then it is only a short step for the council to evict trespassers themselves and realise a higher sale price. If the council is not able to show all that info, or does not have confidence to evict by itself, then the buyer is taking a big risk so pays a lot less.
I don't think a property like Clifton mansion would be auctioned - particularly at the moment. It is much more likely to go to tender which is less transparent but allows the council some choice in who buys it and what their proposals are. They did this for Bradys. It also gives developers a proper chance to assess more complicated sites and make planning enquiries. Potential buyers would need unfettered access to the building so.
Off course they might just sell it to an HA.
Rushy
basically a scrotum
It is not just Lambeth that sells in auction. Most of the housing associations do too. I could point you to a local HA ground floor garden flat sold in 2009 by a large HA for £155,000 to a private buyer. Just 33 days later it was resold untouched for £195,000 and then a year later after redecorating for £285,000.
One of the reasons they do sell at auction is to make the process as transparent as possible, which is necessary because it is not long ago that council and HA surveyors sold properties quietly for silly prices to mates, family, for backhanders, etc..
Another reason is certainty. In an auction the property is sold the moment the hammer drops and the sales hardly ever fall through. Open market sales (in England) regularly fall through after 2-4 months.
It is not true to assume that auction prices are always below open market prices - for a long time they have been consistently above open market prices (roughly 1999-2008). Recently they are considerably below. You can see the data here
As I said in my post above, I would be surprised if they sell this property by auction.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
From the data the prices at auction dropped from 2008 onwards dramatically and haven't gone back up to non auction price.
So still a good buy for the Buy to Let portfolio builders and small developers. In London they cant lose.
The ongoing problem for Councils is that they cant build anymore or rehab there existing street stock. At the end of the last Labour government there was a move to allow Councils to start building Council Housing again. HAs have over the years have had to become more like private developers when doing new developments. Leading them into conflict with tenants as on the Guiness Trust estate.
The underlying problem is the commodification of housing over the last couple of decades. Particularly that new phenomena "Buy to Let". Its surprisng the variety of people I know who got into it. The "market" has failed to fulfil a social need like housing.
See here for background:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/revenge-of-the-repossessed/
We should be under no illusions about the coalition’s purpose – it is the return of what Ralph Miliband called ‘class war Conservatism’, this time with a Liberal face. But to understand fully what is going on here requires an historical perspective..
First, the UK housing crisis did not originate in the boardroom of Lehman Brothers. It is, as Engels explained 140 years ago, an endemic feature of capitalism everywhere that it continually condemns significant numbers of people to housing misery, and periodically blows up into a wider crisis.
It was the catastrophic failure of private landlordism during the 19th and early 20th centuries that gradually impelled state intervention in the form of public housing. During the post-war era, a mixed economy of public and private house building helped to constrain the boom-bust cycle and replace the dominance of the private landlord with a mix of home ownership and council housing. The long-term withdrawal of local authorities from housebuilding has coincided with a highly volatile period of housing market instability, with no fewer than four boom-bust cycles since the early 1970s.
Second, the roots of the present housing crisis can be traced to the over-accumulation crisis of capital of the 1970s, which arguably gave birth to the evil twins of financialisation and neoliberalism. Expanding home ownership was vital for finding new sources of accumulation for finance capital. This is why neoliberalism made the privatisation of public housing in Britain its flagship policy, shutting down affordable and secure alternatives to the market and co-opting key sections of the working class into what Thatcher called ‘popular capitalism’.
So still a good buy for the Buy to Let portfolio builders and small developers. In London they cant lose.
The ongoing problem for Councils is that they cant build anymore or rehab there existing street stock. At the end of the last Labour government there was a move to allow Councils to start building Council Housing again. HAs have over the years have had to become more like private developers when doing new developments. Leading them into conflict with tenants as on the Guiness Trust estate.
The underlying problem is the commodification of housing over the last couple of decades. Particularly that new phenomena "Buy to Let". Its surprisng the variety of people I know who got into it. The "market" has failed to fulfil a social need like housing.
See here for background:
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/revenge-of-the-repossessed/
We should be under no illusions about the coalition’s purpose – it is the return of what Ralph Miliband called ‘class war Conservatism’, this time with a Liberal face. But to understand fully what is going on here requires an historical perspective..
First, the UK housing crisis did not originate in the boardroom of Lehman Brothers. It is, as Engels explained 140 years ago, an endemic feature of capitalism everywhere that it continually condemns significant numbers of people to housing misery, and periodically blows up into a wider crisis.
It was the catastrophic failure of private landlordism during the 19th and early 20th centuries that gradually impelled state intervention in the form of public housing. During the post-war era, a mixed economy of public and private house building helped to constrain the boom-bust cycle and replace the dominance of the private landlord with a mix of home ownership and council housing. The long-term withdrawal of local authorities from housebuilding has coincided with a highly volatile period of housing market instability, with no fewer than four boom-bust cycles since the early 1970s.
Second, the roots of the present housing crisis can be traced to the over-accumulation crisis of capital of the 1970s, which arguably gave birth to the evil twins of financialisation and neoliberalism. Expanding home ownership was vital for finding new sources of accumulation for finance capital. This is why neoliberalism made the privatisation of public housing in Britain its flagship policy, shutting down affordable and secure alternatives to the market and co-opting key sections of the working class into what Thatcher called ‘popular capitalism’.
Rushy
basically a scrotum
This discussion has become pretty detached from the original subject. At the end of the day the previous govt did not instigate a new drive of council house building in 13 years and, given they agreed that significant cuts were required, it is unlikely their plans would have ever come about. I am sure that they knew they couldn't afford it when they proposed it- they didn't expect to get another term.
The previous govt was miles away from the kind of socialism to which you appear to aspire. That is not because there are no politicians who share your views. It is because their ideals do not connect with enough of the electorate and because despite numerous experiments no one can point towards examples of a socialist economy to which a significant number would aspire.
The article you quoted went on to suggest how people could make a voluntary start towards easing the housing crisis. It suggested that people sell their properties to a housing coop and rent it back from them.
Existing homeowners, meanwhile, looking for more collective ways of living together, could sell their homes to a new housing cooperative, swapping their existing mortgages for rents that build up an equity stake in the now collectively-owned asset. Significantly, these homes could no longer be bought and sold in an anonymous competitive market place, creating a collective shield against the speculative and competitive forces driving up the high and inflating prices in the private housing market. If such a model could be generalised to the point that it had critical mass in any defined geographical neighbourhood, it could play a huge role in regulating the private housing market, and in turn, the enormous cost of housing.
It is a nice idea but even on the smallest scale coops have shown themselves to be enormously vulnerable to corruption from within their ranks. It isn't all that long ago that members of the BHC were found to be abusing their administrative positions in order to personally control as many as five or six co-op properties and sub letting them at a market rate for a massive profit. I'm not suggesting that is going on any more in that particular organisation but, even now, that coop has families bringing up their kids in one bed flats whilst some couples live in a large house with a garden. Despite the co-ops idealism it remains hierarchical and people with the most protect their own interests at the expense of those with the least, and often greater need.
It does not make capitalism right. But the alternative models and experiments being proposed do not point towards a system that is credible or desirable enough for a significant number of people to think it is worthy of the quite enormous change that would be required.
Aquamarine
Well-Known Member
other models and proposals to do with housing? It is in the interests of the Brixton community to try and negotiate a new settlement with the council about the future of the squats.
wemakeyousoundb
hopefully not gimboid
not sure this got posted before: national eviction team report...
Rushy
basically a scrotum
Sorry, I meant economic models, not specifically housing. Although housing would obviously play a huge part in any such model. The discussion has gone a little off track so I it's a good job that you brought back to the original subject!
You say that it is in the interests of the Brixton Community to try to negotiate a settlement with the council but do the majority of the community agree with this?? Maybe I am mistaken but the general impression I get is that a large proportion of the community, whilst against the idea of wasting assets by leaving them empty and cautiously open-minded to the argument that certain types of squatter were making good use of a wasted asset whilst it was left empty, would not be particularly in favour of the idea that squatters themselves should be allowed to have much influence on the ultimate possession/use of the property simply on the basis that they had occupied it for a given time.
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
Aquamarine
Well-Known Member
i was referring to the sale of the properties only. i've only heard people refer to them in terms of social assets and object to any sale. so there is an awareness of the impact of them being sold. Instead they could be used - for ex -as sustainable/live work units available for people working on specific projects. They could be refurbished in an environmentally sustainable way, contribute to the sustainability of the community.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Lambeth Borough Council instructed their preferred eviction team UK Evict Limited to remove squatters from Clifton Mansions. The Mansions are made up of 22 individual apartments that have been illegally occupied for 20 years. Lambeth Council served 28 day notices on the occupiers to remove themselves voluntarily before they send in the High Court Enforcement Officers.
At 9.00am Enforcement Officers removed a barricade to the entranceway, whilst avoiding bottles being thrown at them from height, and within two hours effected an extremely safe eviction. A 20 year problem was solved within two hours, again this is testament to the professionalism and experience of the Team
If I was the cops I would be pissed off at this. It was the large number of police that did the work. The small number of bailiffs only took part after the police had secured the entrance to Clifton Mansions. As can be seen from the photos I put up earlier in this thread.
And it hasnt been squatted for 20 years. It was Short life for some of the last 20 years.
Professionalism and experience had nothing to do with it. It was the Police who did it.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
This thread has covered lot of areas and a lot of issues. I was putting up an argument about the underlying reasons for the housing problems in this country. Which is one of the reasons places get squatted.
There are a lot of people in London who see lack of affordable housing as an issue. Who dont see the market as providing housing. Just depends on who u meet on an everyday basis. Thats the section of the article I used that is relevant.
I didnt say that I agreed with all the articles proposals to deal with this issue.
There were moves in the Labour party for a Forth Option- allowing Councils to build Council Housing again. This never got a chance as it came at the end of the last government.
Building for example Council Houses again does not require enormous change. It would also provide employment for people and help the construction industry.
Increasing rights for private/ social tenants and bringing in rent controls does not require radical change. It might be resisted by developers and private rental market
Rushy
basically a scrotum
Really? You don't think that a large proportion of the population exists who feel that welfare state should be there as a security blanket rather than something to become dependent on or complacent about? Westminster council estimates that 2,200 of their tenants in taxpayer subsidised properties are on incomes of over £50,000 - and about £200 are on incomes of over £100,000 - and they are not allowed to put the rent up, let alone turf them out to make way for someone in actual need. Do you think people who have struggled on median salaries of about £400/wk after tax to pay for their own house (rent or mortgage) and see their taxes funding a system that cannot turf out or increase rent for a tenant as wealthy as Bob Crowe or Lee Jasper actually think that is fair. Are you really sure that it is so cut and dry that only developers and 'buy-to-let'ers could possibly resist a push for more rights?
Perhaps rather than demanding more rights we should be talking about necessity, more balanced rights and better use of stock.
stethoscope
Well-Known Member
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Not this old chestnut...
Yes it is that old chestnut and just what the Government is saying.
Gramsci
Well-Known Member
Well I dont know who u talk to but I sense that a lot of people ( and I meet a quite large cross section of people) have seen that its the bankers that are the problem not whatever group are labelled as undeserving. There has been a mood change. Blair did the "balanced rights" line whilst sucking up to rich and powerful. I dont feel that a lot of ordinary people buy it any more. There is however a grudging acceptance that "They" stay rich and powerful and there is not much u can do about it.
The welfare state was not a security blanket. After the 30s depression and war many saw the welfare state as looking after the welfare of the majority. Be it health, housing etc. Rather than laissez faire capitalism. The Welfare state was the "we are in it all together state".
Council housing post war was not meant for the worst off. It contained professionals like teachers for example.
I should have phrased what I said more carefully. Private tenants rights have been eroded over the years and rent controls have all but gone. I assume you are not against rent controls for the private sector and the return of some of the rights that private tenants have lost.? Thats what I meant when I said that developers and private rental would resist.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
"Taxpayer-subsidised!?
I do hope you're not talking about local authority social housing, but as you've mentioned Bob Crowe, you must be.
Taxpayers do NOT subsidise local authority social housing (RSL social housing, for that matter). In fact LA social housing rents subsidise central government, year on year. Get your facts right before farting out the tabloid line.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Not this old chestnut...
Time and fucking time again. Some daft cunt in the Torygraph, The Scum or The Fail vomits out that lie, and you can guarantee a whole constellation of gullible wankers will buy the lie.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Well, they're careful not to actually say it so baldly. They prefer to sow the conversation with talking points and then allow the gullible to draw their own conclusions.
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