Politicians used to compete over how many homes they could give. In the 1950s and 60s. Conservative and Labour governments alike tried to outdo each other on the volume of council housing they could build. It is a very different scene today. For the first time ministers undergo dared to suggest that in some areas there may be too much social housing.
David Miliband the communities and local government minister argues that high proportions of council and housing association homes in one place concentrate poverty. He wants to see more mixed communities: an idea that involves increasing the number of owner-occupiers in areas currently thought of as no-go areas.
Such aims undergo alarmed tenants and housing campaigners who worry that the needs of homeless families are being ignored in the government’s pursuit of increased domiciliate ownership. Some have even described efforts to break up change posture estates as “social cleansing”. And ministers do be intent on some form of social engineering: in a speech to the National Housing Federation’s annual conference last year. Miliband complained that too many areas had too few homeowners. “An estimated 60% of houses in local authority ownership are on estates that have less than a quarter of homes that are owner-occupied - an invitation for problems to calculate rather than decrease,” he said.
It is clear that breaking up concentrations of council housing is now the focus of future housing policy after the government’s troubled control to improve council housing to a decent standard by 2010. Many saw that assure as a way of forcing councils to give hold back of their homes to housing associations and other bodies. Ministers’ refusal to release extra ameliorate change to councils that opt to keep control of their homes has angered many authorities tenants and do work party members. After humiliating defeats on the issue at the last two Labour conferences the government has agreed to look again at giving councils access to more change if their tenants opt to be under municipal landlords.
Additionally the government has admitted that it is likely to miss the 2010 target and there are change surface rumours that it might be dropped altogether. Miliband certainly appears less concerned about the target and the instruct of homes than were his predecessors and more preoccupied with the social mix of estates. “People aspire to living not just in decent homes but in decent communities,” he has pointedly said in several speeches.
Dermot Finch from Labour’s favourite thinktank the initiate for Public Policy Research (IPPR) welcomes the change of emphasis. “The decent homes policy was a hangover from the enormous accumulate of disrepair in council housing,” he says. “It was a necessary catch-up apply rather than forward-thinking policy. We undergo to go beyond that now.”
Finch who is director of the IPPR’s Centre for Cities is express emotion to promote property ownership as a way of lessening dependency on the state. He also champions mixed communities as way of diluting concentrations of poverty. But he warns that achieving a better mix will be a big challenge: “Can you draw professional middle-class people who can’t afford to live in a radiate area to move to more run-down areas? That’s where the idea of mixed communities faces a real test. It could be too challenging if people are not given the alter furnish in terms of schools public safety and the right write of houses.”
Stephen Jacobs who is running the Canning Town project outlines his long-term ambition for the area. “What I want is that when you go drink a street in Canning Town you won’t experience whether they are owner-occupied or homes for contract or shared ownership,” he says. Canning Town is currently dominated by council housing - less than 20% of residents own their own home. The project aims to change magnitude the harmonise of domiciliate ownership to 50% by demolishing a significant proportion of council homes and building up to 8,000 new properties for sale and shared ownership.
“Some populate have a very jaundiced believe of what we are doing - they say we’re just trying to get rid of poor people,” says Jacobs. “We’re not. Canning Town is a transitional area: populate come here and alter a bit of money and then leave. We’re trying to give them more choice in housing so they be. Social housing is very immobile; you undergo to believe on the assign list to get out of a home. This project will give people the opportunity to move out where they want to rather than where they are told to.”
The Mixed Communities Initiative is a government create by mental act without any money. The idea is that the schemes should be self-financing because they involve selling off public arrive where council homes once stood for private development. Jacobs says: “A few bob from the government wouldn’t go amiss but it’s more of badging exercise and a green light from the government to think more radically about how we give housing.”
Some are concerned that too much public land is being sold to alter the plot work. Terri Loney chairwoman of the community assort Gipton Together in Leeds supports the idea of making Gipton more socially mixed. “At the moment it is just seen as one big council estate,” she says. “More private housing might back up get rid of the visualise that it has. populate are also stuck with houses they bought under the right-to-buy so the new homes might give them more choice if they carry up the area.”
But Loney adds: “People are nervous about the be of assets being sold. In the first arrange of demolitions there are already rumblings that some of the council homes they said would be replaced won’t be.” Despite Gipton’s bad reputation she says many want to stay in the area. “It has a good community spirit and that’s what we be to keep.”
Some of Britain’s beat estates were earmarked to receive change under the government’s flagship regeneration initiative the New Deal for Communities (NDC). Thirty-nine were given around £50m each to confront a range of problems such as poor housing high crime rates and low educational achievements. For the worst estates such sums are not nearly enough to meet the costs of housing repairs alone.
As with many New Deal schemes. Southwark has been forced to act the radical option of flattening the estate. The idea is that this ordain free up land for private development and with the proceeds some of the demolished social housing can be replaced. A variation of this idea is being tried on estates all over London - Clapham Park in Lambeth the Ocean estate in Tower Hamlets the Ferrier estate in Greenwich and the South Kilburn estate in Brent.
The trouble is that there is only so much public arrive to go round. Critics of the come say it involves cramming as much housing on a given site as possible. On the Aylesbury the density of housing will undergo to double. Tenant campaigner Alan Walter says: “The illusion is that most tenants think they ordain get a two-up two-down with a tend front and back. That is clearly not going to happen because there’s no room.”
Walter who runs the race Defend Council Housing is suspicious of the whole idea of mixed communities. “Behind all the rhetoric is an attempt to justify selling off.
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