Guinness Trust plans for Loughborough Park Estate

[shifting gears]

*sets alarm

(Plural)

 

[shifting gears]

Blockade in place. One decorators truck blocked, though they've unloaded all their paint and materials at the entrance and been allowed to take them in to the site. One of said decorators exchanged a few choice words with some residents and then rather charmingly stuck his middle finger up.

2 security came over first thing pulling the 'we're nice guys really and respect your right to protest.' However they then qualified by saying if protestors physically tried to physically block lorries then they'd 'we'll have to move you on' , but 'asking the lorry drivers not to cross is acceptable'.

Standard shite.

In other news the sun is shining.

 

[editor]

Photos here, courtesy of shifting gears

http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2015/05/...-on-the-blockade-photos-from-26th-may-action/

 

[Dexter Deadwood]

Good work shifting gears

 

[Gramsci]

Update. The occupation is being taken to court on Tuesday 22nd by Guinness Trust :

We are being taken to court by The Guinness Partnership Limited (Guinness Trust) tomorrow (22 June) for a Possession Order for 82 and 84 Elveden House. We will be in the County Court at Lambeth (Cleaver St, Kennington Road, SE11 4DZ) at 2pm. If you’d like to come, then we’d love the support, but more important than any court judgement is the fight in the streets. A Possession Order is not undertaken by the police, but rather by bailiffs and thus can be can be legally resisted. Resistance can take many forms, from barricading inside the flats, to blockading entrances, to supporting from outside the building. We can all play a role in resisting our oppression, the violence of evictions, and the gentrification of Brixton.

We may not know when the eviction will happen, so watch our twitter.

See you soon, friends!

 

[editor]

Update: Brixton’s Guinness Trust: the last estate tenants tell their story

 

[editor]

Here's the sad sight today:

In photos: Brixton’s Guinness Trust buildings flattened as regeneration/gentrification marches on

 

[stethoscope]

I didn't realise this estate was falling to the wrecking ball too. FFS.

The Loughborough Park estate was built in the 1930s and provided 390 social rented flats. Under the Guinness regeneration programme, a total of 487 new-build apartments will be created, with the provision of social rented flats falling to just 211.

Guinness Trust maintain that a percentage of the new flats will be offered at “affordable” rents, which will be pegged at 80% of the market value.

This is the problem with all this 'regeneration' stuff. Yes, there's an overall increase in the number of dwellings, but the actual number of socialaffordable ones falls on every single one of the developments - I've seen it all over London, including mates in East London.

And as soon as any private partnerships are involved in once purely local authority owned housing, it won't be long before the 'make-up' of this development will eventually favour private rents and RTB and the social housing pool dwindles even further.

 

[teuchter]

I saw this a couple of weeks ago, half-demolished and it's a sad sight indeed.

Were all of those original 390 social rented flats still social rented prior to "regeneration"? If not how many were?

 

[stethoscope]

The Guinness site doesn't make it abundantly clear:
http://www.guinnesspartnership.com/about-us/press-and-media/loughborough-park-redevelopment

But in this piece from Brixton Blog in 2013, it suggests so (that comma placement is a bit confusing):

The housing association is working alongside the local authority and private contractors to carry out a £75m transformation of the estate. The plan will see the demolition of the existing buildings, with 390 social housing flats and 525 new mixed-tenure apartments being put up in their place. The seven-year project is due for completion in 2018.

In August last year, one vulnerable resident of the estate, Steve Simpson, was found dead in his flat just months after a draining court battle with Guinness Trust that led to him being evicted from his home.

Another short-term tenant of three years, who did not want to be named, says her health suffered hugely after the ordeal of battling eviction. Following this, she was moved to a hostel by Lambeth Council for a year which she described as “like living in a box”.

She added: “Guinness Trust are playing a double game. They are talking about regeneration and modernity on one side, but on the other, they are getting rid of us.”

Also worth noting back then that 525 new homes were supposed to be appearing in their place. Not sure what has changed/what that entails.

 

[editor]

FFS. This is so cruel.

Brixton single mother faces eviction after Guinness Partnership increases her rent by 240 per cent

Please share and sign the petition (just 215 signatures now so loads more needed)
The Guinnness Partnership: Stop Rent Exploitation

 

[nick]

Signed

 

[editor]

The article has been seen on Buzz over 700 times and another 64 signatures added to the petition, but it would be great if people could keep sharing this.

 

[editor]

Got this email from Guinness:

Ms Mehari was an assured shorthold tenant. While we had no obligation
to rehouse her, we felt it was the correct thing to do in the
circumstances, however, government policy meant that we had to offer
the new tenancy at affordable rent.

If you have more detailed questions about Ms Mehari’s case, we would
be happy to answer them, but to avoid breaching confidentiality, we
would need Ms Mehari to give you written permission for us to discuss
her circumstances with you.

 

[sealion]

Signed and shared.

 

[ViolentPanda]

FFS. This is so cruel.

Brixton single mother faces eviction after Guinness Partnership increases her rent by 240 per cent

Please share and sign the petition (just 215 signatures now so loads more needed)
The Guinnness Partnership: Stop Rent Exploitation

She's a lovely, genuine person. I met her last year, when she came to the Stand Up to Lambeth banner-making workshop, and the march the week after. I've heard the odd twat saying "ah, another feckless single mum", and have been unable to resist putting them right that she's a hard-working single mum whose landlord is basically making life unliveable for her. Sadly, the closure of the local Adventure Playground holiday schemes also fucked her over so that she couldn't work during school holidays. If Lambeth Council had any compassion, they'd rehouse her, but they have none.

 

[Gramsci]

Got this email from Guinness:

So called "affordable rent" is government policy. However it's up to Housing Associations whether they apply it or not. HAs can still give housing at social rent if that's what they want to do.

So for Guiness to say it's government policy does not mean legal obligation.

 

[Gramsci]

Instead of sticking up for social housing and actively opposing the government the Housing Association movement has just given in. It's forgotten what it was meant to do.

 

[Gramsci]

The same goes with tenancies that HAs give. The government may like them to give time limited ones. It's up to individual HAs what kind of tenancies they use.

 

[Gramsci]

And linking social housing rents to market rent is crap. In this country the private landlords can charge what they want. There are no rent controls. Rights of private tenants have been eroded over the years.

What's needed is big programme of social house building. Plus bringing back rent controls for private tenants.

 

[Gramsci]

Article here on how high housing costs are affecting people.

There are now two distinct classes in Britain: Those who own property and those who are getting poorer

 

[editor]

A comment on the Buzz article summed it up for me:

Be a charity…. But a greedy profit making machine with no morals. Come on Guinness Trust… You’re better than this.

Also:

ASH RESPONSE TO ‘GUINNESS RESPONDS’

1) Beti’s tenancy status wasn’t an act of God. Like a hundred other tenants on Loughborough Park Estate, Beti, despite living there for ten years, was kept on an assured shorthold tenancy by the Guinness Partnership for precisely this reason: that when the time came to demolish her home she, like the others, would have no rights.

2) Guinness didn’t re-house Beti because they thought it was ‘the right thing to do’. They did it because she fought their demolition of her home. Unaffordable as her current tenancy is, she was only 1 of 11 ASTs to be so rehoused. ‘Doing the right thing’ didn’t stretch to Guinness’s treatment of the other 89.

3) Affordable rent is anything up to 80% of market rate. Beti’s current, unaffordable rent is set by one thing and one thing only: how much she can claim on a two bedroom flat on housing benefit, and therefore the maximum amount the Guinness Partnership can pocket from the taxpayer.

4) Another AST tenant from Loughborough Park estate re-hosued in the exact same block with the same number of children and therefore bedrooms as Beti is paying Guinness £175/week. The reason is that, although she is allowed to work in this country, she cannot claim state benefits.

5) Far from ‘doing the right thing’, the Guinness Partnership, as this response shows, are using vulnerable single mothers whose homes and lives they have casually destroyed to fill their pockets with taxpayers’ money paid in housing benefit by central government.

6) The Guinness Partnership are quite capable of giving Beti the social rent and secure tenancy she needs to rebuild the life they have torn apart. That they have refused to shows that this is their revenge for Beti standing up to them on the Loughborough Park estate, and they want to make an example of her to other tenants thinking of fighting their eviction by this unscrupulous and vindictive housing association.

7) Tenants facing the demolition of their homes on the Northwold Estate in Hackney are watching this campaign closely to see what the promises of the Guinness Partnership are worth.

architectsforsocialhousing.wordpress.com

 

[editor]

I'm posting this just so Guinness know: nearly 2,000 people have now read that post about Beti on Buzz in the last 18 hours and many, many more people have shared it or retweeted it.
People are watching. People care about this and people will judge Guinness by their actions. This won't go away. Do the right thing, FFS.

 

[Gramsci]

Been in touch with Beteil. editor -she says thanks a million for the Brixton Buzz piece.

 

[alex_]

Instead of sticking up for social housing and actively opposing the government the Housing Association movement has just given in. It's forgotten what it was meant to do.

It's ok they have a new agenda Inside Housing chief executive salary survey 2015 | Analysis | Inside Housing

Alex

 

[ViolentPanda]

The same goes with tenancies that HAs give. The government may like them to give time limited ones. It's up to individual HAs what kind of tenancies they use.

Within a narrow field, though. All HA tenancies are "Assured" tenancies (as defined by the 1988 Housing Act), and differ from secure tenancies (as defined by the 1985 Housing Act) in that if you get into arrears, the court has no discretion with regard to evicting you - if you owe 8 weeks of rent or more, you stand to be evicted. With a secure tenancy, the court can look at the facts behind the arrears, and act accordingly, so that a tenant is not evicted, and a reasonable compromise on the arrears is sought.

 

[Gramsci]

It's ok they have a new agenda Inside Housing chief executive salary survey 2015 | Analysis | Inside Housing

Alex

The link is a firewall.

Social housing chief executives’ enormous pay packets are indefensible

This Guardian article is bit old but raises the issues. I have no problem with people being well paid. It's that when it comes down to standing up to the government they they forget what they should be doing.

"The reason is this: though housing associations are tasked with one of the most difficult jobs in the country, they are also have a social purpose. They don’t just provide housing, they act as the voice of the voiceless, they create opportunities for those who have none, they are lobbyists for a fairer and more just society. In meeting these wider objectives they have a duty to reduce the income ratio between the highest and lowest paid – in their organisations, in society, between the top earners in housing and the incomes of the tenants that they serve when cuts are hitting benefit claimants hard."

Last week bumped into someone I know who works for a Council . He was asking about the Carlton Mansions piece on Brixton Buzz. editor Council officers read Buzz. Says stuff they cannot go on about. He said he didn't get into social housing to end up working on schemes that are destroying social housing. I think a lot of people who work further down the food chain feel really uncomfortable about what they are doing now.

 

[Gramsci]

Within a narrow field, though. All HA tenancies are "Assured" tenancies (as defined by the 1988 Housing Act), and differ from secure tenancies (as defined by the 1985 Housing Act) in that if you get into arrears, the court has no discretion with regard to evicting you - if you owe 8 weeks of rent or more, you stand to be evicted. With a secure tenancy, the court can look at the facts behind the arrears, and act accordingly, so that a tenant is not evicted, and a reasonable compromise on the arrears is sought.

It depends on how the HAs apply it.

Back in 70s HAs were quite radical. More so than Councils. Solon for example. Or the Soho Housing who saved the social housing in Soho. They were small scale and staffed by new lefties. Most of them didn't survive being swallowed up by the more ruthless empire builders in Thatcherite Britian. It's getting to the point where HAs are little different from property developers. Which of course is what the Thatcherite Tories wanted.

 

[brixtonblade]

Article here on how high housing costs are affecting people.

There are now two distinct classes in Britain: Those who own property and those who are getting poorer

The last 2 graphs in that article are incredible - hadn't seen them before:

 

[editor]

Article here on how high housing costs are affecting people.

There are now two distinct classes in Britain: Those who own property and those who are getting poorer

There also seems to be a growing gulf of understanding and empathy from those who own property towards those who rent (*based entirely on wholly unscientific personal observations and the hardening attitudes of some - but most definitely not all - home owning posters here).