By Tim Dickens and Zoe Jewell, Editors
It was nearly 11pm at the end of a long, stuffy planning meeting at Lambeth Town Hall when the committee finally got round to discussing the change of use of 48 homes at Brixton Square from “social” housing to “affordable”.
Some who had come to hear the discussion over Brixton Square had already gone home, and it took the Labour majority on the panel less than 20 minutes to approve the application and further line the pockets of a successful property developer. Not one Labour councillor on the committee saw fit to question Barratt Homes (who made a healthy £45million profit in the last six months alone) about just why they were going back on their promise to deliver social housing. Or why they had waited until construction was all but finished before applying for the change. There was no mention of the joint community campaign, including the Bugle, Urban 75 and Brixton Buzz, that attracted the backing of hundreds of fed-up residents.
In a letter on this blog, Cllr Pete Robbins defends the move, blaming coalition government for scrapping grants for new social housing. But Barratt Homes knew there were grants before they submitted their first planning application, which included “social”, rather than “affordable” allocation. It was this Labour council who signed off on the original agreement for Brixton Square, complete with an allotment of housing that would have been truly affordable.
The abject failure of the council to stand up to mega-developers like Barratt sets a chilling precedent. Indeed, the council already has a record of not standing up to developers, as we saw with Streatham Hub and Tesco. As we prepare for consultations on a hefty development across the street from Brixton Square, in Somerleyton Road, all the council have done is shown their true colours. They have shown they have no desire to protect families from being squeezed out in favour of the more wealthy by preserving truly affordable housing within our town centre
Council and government policies on “affordable” housing are not, in fact, affordable. In a workshop on housing at Somerleyton Rd last month, a member of the Lambeth Tenants Council said that average income of someone living in council property is £13,000 and yet “affordable” is often set at 60% of the market rent and nationally sometimes at 80%, with the market rate rising fast in Brixton. Why has “affordable” been set so high?
Lambeth council, as a substantial landowner in Brixton, needs to replace soothing words on protecting our community with hard action. Soaring land prices in Brixton mean that Lambeth should have had the upper hand in these negotiations. The Barratt Homes and Tescos of the world should be bending over backwards to please us – not the other way round.
Finally, we were shocked and saddened to hear about the untimely death of Fr Tom Heneghan. Dozens of comments on Brixton Blog, and more than 15,000 page views of Cllr Heywood’s touching tribute, are a testament to this truly great man.
For discussions on the Somerleyton developments, where the quota of social and/or affordable housing will be a big part of the debate, see urban 75’s forum here.
The idea that market forces or market rates should be allowed to determine how much rents are is regressive and stupid. This is e specially more so in a time of austerity and in the midst of a housing crises. The only people it benefits are greedy landlords who trouser millions by exploiting the fear of homelessness.. Rents should be regulated and controlled to ensure that they are affordable and fair.
Why are you all having a go at Peter? If he’s rented to a council tenant then there’s likely be no deposit scheme in place; which means that he’ll have received the same rent as if he’d rented it privately, which is perfectly normal, except he won’t have any recourse for the hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds of damage he’s been left with!
And it’s not ‘avaricious’ to charge a high rent; if it’s what the market will bear then it’s simply good business to get a return from your asset. If you don’t like that then go live in North Korea – I hear communism’s going down a storm there!
Is that the best you can come up with? There are perhaps around 5 million people in need of housing waiting on council housing lists. At the same time billions of pounds of tax payers money – that is money you and I pay (I’m assuming you do actually work) – of housing benefit line the pockets of private landlords charging rip-off rents. We have a terrible housing crises in the UK which is the legacy of Thatcher selling off social housing stock and successive governments not replacing the stock. If you’re homeless you might appreciate how serious and desperate this is. But the best Baz can come up with is ’Go and live in North Korea’? Brillaint.
A punchy piece of rhetoric, John, but the 5 million people waiting on housing lists are not all homeless, are they? No. The number is much smaller. So those people aren’t all homeless—which makes the sophist’s twist of “If you’re homeless, you might well appreciate,” all the more disingenuous, as it helps you to conflate level of housing stock with homelessness. False equivalence there. Also, the Blame Thatcher Auto-Response mechanism is a bit tired isn’t it? It’s not really that reasonable to put this at her feet. She left office nearly a quarter of a century ago. I mean, come on. Come ON. The country has changed so dramatically since then—it’s an absurd line to pull. Our housing problem is of the last ten years and is a product of a rising population and not enough houses being built. It’s irrelevant whether she sold off public housing—we’d still have the same problem if Callaghan had won in 79.
Peter shame on you. You’re milking the public purse (read tax payer) to get your private rented sector extortion paid. You make a sweeping statement about all people who are forced to rent from landlords like you who should frankly be doing all you can to keep social tenants in your property witj adequate tenancy support. I assume you knew she had a small child, you could have replaced expensive furniture with cheaper versions. You should have been doing monthly tenancy health checks. You might have been concerned about her welfare if you had bothered to be more than a rent collector and she a cash cow, for you. How does one ruin a fridge? Both my kids grew up in Chelsea flats and country houses at the weekend, lived in my father’s amazing homes worth millions of pounds. Guess what? They felt tipped Chesterfield sofas and stucco Veneziano walls at £500 a square foot. That is what children do. Or do you think poor people should not have children, because the a different conversation. If your rental flat meant anything more to you than easy money perhaps you might look after it better and take some of the responsibility for its upkeep and maintenance. You make Mr Rachmann look rather endearing compared to your vile bile.
We have had a council tenant in our privately owned flat for the last year and will never do it again. She ruined the fridge to the point it had to be thrown out, ruined all the furniture, was always late with the rent in spite of the fact that most of it was paid by the tax payer, allowed her child to felt tip all over the sofa and walls, and it will probably take a nuclear reactor to clean the oven properly for re-use. Social housing in private flats? You are having a laugh – don’t ruin beautiful flats by renting to them – you will regret it.
Poor old you, what a monstrous inconvenience! No doubt the rent you charged this tiresome tenant of yours was comparable to what rents are for social housing?
Because obviously the idea of avariciously charging a high rent that tax payers subsidise is something that you would never ever contemplate, is it?