One has to be suspicious at the very least of a graph titled: 'Why does Lambeth want to destroy affordable housing?' Although, if from Lambeth, it's what you would expect
"Affordable" is a highly abused word today. In the government's definition they include shared ownership schemes which require above average incomes for people to be eligible. On Cressingham the clear majority of the homeowners are actually marginal homeowners ... Many are now retired and elderly unable to get a new mortgage, or are families and workers who simply would no longer qualify for mortgages as a consequence of the changes in the past few years. At the moment they can 'afford' their homes. However, once the council forces them to sell at 'market values' insufficient to buy anything else in the area and triggers their mortgages, many of these residents will be forced to leave London or even in extreme cases made homeless. Simply google to find the dispersion maps of what happened to the residents on the Heygate. Also the 'market values' of the new build homes are typically £100k to £150k more than the old homes - known in the industry as the "value gap". I know of very few residents who could afford this. And it has a wider impact of driving up prices generally in the area. As a consequence private rentals also go up because they are a function of house prices.
So who wins in the end?
* 120 homes demolished and support networks destroyed - no one has yet valued the cost of the disappearing community support - who is going to help the elderly fight for their repairs, etc?
* Council might get extra 15 council homes (but this might disappear during the planning and building phases as seen in many cases in Lambeth), but delving further into the numbers shows that in fact it is only 16 extra council tenant bedrooms. They achieve this by not replacing 13 family sized homes (ie 3+ bed)... Very wierd when this is where there is the chronic shortage.
* 20+ households unlikely to be able to stay because they can't afford the value gap and they won't qualify for any of the other options that the council might pretend to put on the table.
* 85 new properties for private sale at 'market prices'. If I recall corectly, in the new block next to the Tescos 1 bed flats were selling for £350k and that was a year ago. And they could end up in the hands of overseas investors and possibly stand empty because they are investments not homes.
* And at the end the council is in even more debt than if they were to simply refurbish and keep the community together, let alone the extra costs for more support and social care that will be required and the cost for this regeneration consultation (alone which could have probably funded 75-100 new kitchens)
No one wins out of the current proposed demolition of Cressingham Gardens except maybe the people employed by the council who get to keep their well paid jobs and the various developers and contractors hired.