Demolishing housing estates

You were complaining about Cameron claiming moving expenses.

You also claimed that he said he 'lived in' his own house, whereas he didn't say that at all. No apology then? No, I thought not...

Not complaining, just stating.

I've said what his actual words were, I own my home.
Why are you not picking up roses for getting it wrong, too?
Of course, you never do, do you?

At PMQs he said in response to Corbyn that he lived in his own house, Corbyn lived in his, but wanted to deny the rest of the population the ability to own their own homes.

But you've had to backtrack and can't even admit you got it wrong - after all, you did accuse DC of 'telling fibs'...Ridiculous.

So what would a Labour MP do if he/she won the next general election?

Oh yes I get it. "I'm so sorry I can't move into number 10 until I have sold my house in xxxxxxxx street"

Cameron is letting out his own house while living rent-free in Downing St - nice perk!
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3402417/David-Cameron-slammed-earning-500-000-renting-family-home-Notting-Hill-Prime-Minister-cracking-social-housing.html
He silly Eton school yard jibing and joking in PMQs is getting very tedious.

I find his well rehearsed answers tedious too JessM, on a question on the floods he launched into a joke - I am being kind by calling it a joke- giving a list of Shakespeare plays . A question on shortage of houses brings - I own my home you own yours, what has that to do with the many desperate for social housing

This is a load of fuss over nothing ( not for the first time.)

So what if Camerom chooses to let his house?He can't be in two places at once, so may as well.

Don't most (if not all) PMs do that? It's not likely that they'd be required to sell up before they moved into number 10 (or 11 if you're Tony Blair).

Impossible for any new PM to sell their homes before moving into no 10, they only have a few hours before the move. Blair did sell his, Heath kept his,can't remember what the others did

Does it matter?

What matters is the truth is told

"In the weeks since chancellor George Osborne announced that rent paid by social housing tenants should be reduced by 1% a year for the next four years, housing associations in the UK have been scrambling to work out how to absorb the loss. The solution for one of the UK’s biggest housing associations was simple: don’t build social housing anymore.

The justification for the new direction, announced in an Inside Housing interview with Genesis housing association chief executive Neil Hadden, was that the government’s view of social housing had changed. Government policy has been increasingly hard on housing associations. Since 2010, funding was cut by 60%, and since then welfare reforms have hit tenants and affected rental income, the right-to-buy scheme will force associations to sell homes at huge discounts while a 1% cut in social housing rents will reduce the number of homes they can afford to build.

Hadden said the sector could “whinge and bleat” about such changes or adapt. In Genesis’s case, it will now only build homes for sale, shared ownership or to rent out at higher rates. Perhaps the most shocking part of the interview was his response when asked about the organisation’s historical responsibility to house the poor. “That won’t be my problem,” he said. "

From an article about social housing last year. This is the full article.

www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/aug/07/housing-asssociation-no-longer-build-homes-poor-genesis

I find it very depressing. In PMQs Cameron once again said that the Tory government had built more council houses than the previous 11 (?) years of Labour government. That is because social housing is now built by housing associations.

And this is what the government are determined to achieve , there will be no social housing

www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/nov/23/gentrification-play-londons-housing-crisis-where-will-we-live

Yes, Annie. Where do they move to when their houses have been knocked down?

One of the depressing things about the Genesis housing association was that they provided funding for the government's housing policy.
I wonder who is on the board at Genesis.

Maybe they should go to Leamington.

leamingtonobserver.co.uk/news/leamington-cafe-owners-scheme-aiming-help-homeless/

Jen, where will they go is a question I asked at the start of this thread , they must be fearful,

Yes, Annie. Trying to get it back on track.

Not to Oxford.

www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/dec/18/dreaming-spires-oxford-uk-most-unaffordable-city

www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/jan/13/brutalist-housing-estates-private-barbican-social-london

Two housing estates near to each other. One is to be pulled down. They were both built in the late sixties, and probably would fit into Cameron's view of sink estates.
Flats sell in one of them for £4 million. That's not the one to be pulled down.
The reason the other one is to be is because it has only 214 flats on a large site, and the council wants to build a lot more on the site.

I worked near the Barbican when the flats were built. I thought them hideous then and I haven't changed my mind. However, I would point out that the Barbican flats are high density and the cost of keeping the site in good order means service charges from £2,000 - £16,000 a year. Not many council tenants can afford service charges at that level

On the other hand the Robin Hood Gardens estate is low density and if over 1500 council dwellings can be built to replace under 250 then there is a good argument for doing that, particularly in an inner city area where sites for new homes are difficult to find. However, I rather suspect that many of the new homes would be for private sale, and that is a different thing altogether.

I get very uneasy when heritage groups get together to protect buildings because of who designed them and the fact that they were revolutionary when built. I say this, even though generally I admire the work of the architects involved, but the judgement of a building should be its fitness for purpose whether it is a block of flats, a school, or any other building.

The evidence is that the Robin Hood Gardens building are not fit for purpose and I can think of no good reason why council tenants should have to live in a decaying building that neither they nor their council can afford to maintain to please some architectural purists. If the residents of the Barbican are prepared to stump up to keep a very ugly development maintained regardless of cost let them.

The Barbican Estate is not private, as stated in The Guardian article.

It's owned by The Corporation of London but was built post-war with the intention of attracting financial professionals back to The City after the war and rents were set at market prices. With the coming of Right to Buy many of the flats ended up in private ownership.

So basically it's a very posh council estate!

I love The Barbican and would live there given half the chance - it's in the ancient heart of London. The complex is more that the three towers - lots of other types of buildings too, plus the Barbican Theatre, Guildhall School of Music, etc.

The flats in Shakespeare tower, the middle and tallest of the three, are fantastic - large with wraparound balconies, huge rooms and flexible interiors. As I said earlier, nothing wrong with brutalist architecture, walkways, etc., all depends on who lives there and how the housing stock is maintained.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbican_Estate

Well said M0nica

I am another who is uneasy about listing buildings purely because of they wer considered to be revolutionary in their day. A case in point is Park Hill Flats in Sheffield. Built in the late fifties, early sixties to house those rendered homeless by the slum clearance programme, these brutalist "streets in the sky" concrete complexes were considered to be the very last word in social housing, and indeed the people who moved into them in the early days could not speak highly enough if them. By the mid to late seventies the council were finding it difficult to find people who wanted to live there and they rapidly became sink estates, with all the attendant problems. They stood all but empty for years, a crumbling eyesore and the first thing people saw when they came to the city centre either by car or by train. Most people favoured them being pulled down. Then in 1998, some bright spark decided to give them a grade II listing. One of the blocks has recently been renovated by a private company and the apartments are being offered for sale and private rent. As far as i can ascertain, there is no "affordable housing" included in the mix. The second unrenovated block remains all but empty and boarded up (i believe there are two tenants hanging on who either refuse to be, or cannot be, rehoused). I don't know what the plans are for this block (except that, given that it is now listed, it won't be pulled down) but it would be nice to think that, if and when it is renovated, at least a proportion of it would be for social rent. I'm not holding my breath though.

The reason the other one is to be is because it has only 214 flats on a large site, and the council wants to build a lot more on the site
That's good then, as long as they are for the people vacating them and others who would not be able to pay £4 million!