300 affordable homes by 2018!? Where?
I asked Matthew Bennett that very question. His answer was to find something else important that needed to be done.
Then, I suppose it looks good in Council's books - '300 new homes'. As long as nobody hears about thousands of dislocated people as a result of that.
That's a point we (Save Cressingham Gardens) have been making for over 2 years now - that demolition, even allowing for relocating tenants onto the new estates, destroys community cohesion. Yes, some of the same people will still live in the same
locale, but that doesn't mean that what I'd term "neighbourliness" (people doing stuff for neighbours) will automatically be present.
Speaking of "dislocation", are you aware that tenants who want to move off of regen estates, are being prioritised for re-housing, over and above people who may have been on the waiting list for years? Apparently emptying homes on regen estates is another route by which Lambeth will claim to have some sort of mandate for demolition - "well, half the places were empty, anyway!".
I agree. The decision seems to have been made a while ago. This is only a process to follow to make it legal. Otherwise, it would have been true regeneration, rather than demolition.
One of the more bizarre claims Lambeth is making (in favour of demolition) is that some properties are in a poor state of neglect. One may think, that Lambeth is going to demolish all the houses every 30-40 years, when it fails to maintain them.
As a reasonably long-term Cressingham resident (20 years), I've often given a timeline to people asking about neglect, which I believe signifies the changing attitudes to maintenance of the council:
The first 5 years I was here, the council cleared our gutters 3-4 times a year.
The next 5 years, 1-2 times a year.
The 5 years after that,once a year.
The last 5 years, they haven't bothered. The only time any guttering gets cleared is when a stretch is blocked, and then it's just that run that gets dealt with.
I have lost a lot of sleep over this and there is more to come. My stomach turns thinking of the next twelve months. I am puzzled and confused that this sort of thing is allowed, legal and commended in this country today.
I stopped losing sleep about it a while back. Now I just get angry, then channel the anger. We've come up with a broad variety of approaches to fighting estate regen, from legal action, to our "People's Plan" for Cressingham, to holding a light to Bennett and his fellow Progress stooges. As a Lambeth councillor who's unsympathetic to Bennett's style of regen told me, "the way to get to him and his mates is to embarrass them. Make people realise that he's not in it to help people in Lambeth, but to help himself" (on which theme, "Town Hall" gossip has Bennett as Chairman of the council's "Homes for Lambeth" Special Purpose Vehicle, if/when it comes on line).
