Corbyn joins housing protest

 by New Worker correspondent

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was one of 30 campaigners who took part in a protest outside Pentonville Prison last week. The protest targeted a Ministry of Justice (MoJ) decision to sell off two blocks of 28 flats formerly used to house prison staff.
    In his capacity as the local MP, he said: “The Ministry of Justice is selling off a group of properties at the back of Pentonville Prison. The council, quite correctly, tried to buy them in order to house local people in housing need.”
    Their particular objection is that the developer, LGP Wellington Mews Ltd, has submitted several applications for a Certificates of Lawfulness for Existing Use or Development (CLEUD), which would excuse it meeting a target of 50 per cent of the homes on the site being rented at so-called affordable rates.
    Islington Council was close to a deal with the MoJ in 2019 to acquire the flats, used as temporary accommodation for those in desperate need of homes, but this fell through. Now Corbyn says: “The Ministry of Justice upped the price and prevented Islington from doing that. So what are we doing? We’re demonstrating outside those places to say to the MoJ and everybody else: let us solve the housing crisis by filling the empty homes with people that need them.”
    Unsurprisingly this claim was rejected by the MoJ, who insisted they were put out on the open market and that they were not trying to blackmail the council.
    Private ‘affordable housing’ is of course nothing of the sort. On Monday, a search of local estate agents for one-bedroom flats had nothing under £500,000.

Haringey housing sell-off plan overthrown

  THE LABOUR Party Blairites entrenched in many local authorities and carrying out social cleansing by demolishing council estates and replacing them with privately owned luxury developments suffered a serious setback last week when Clare Kober, leader of Haringey council, was forced to resign.

This followed a defeat for her plans to sell off council estates, the civic centre and libraries in a massive £2 billion deal with the private company Lendlease. It would have been the biggest deal of its kind ever undertaken by a local authority in Britain and it was economically risky.

The existing council tenants were told they would be rehoused in the new accommodation that was to be built – but on a shared-ownership basis that few would be able to afford. And those who scrutinised the details found plenty of loopholes for former tenants and leaseholders to be excluded from returning

Local tenants had campaigned against the sell-off since it was first proposed, as did left-Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors. It was the sort of deal that gave Labour a bad name.

 Kober and her colleagues called their plan Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV). But Cllr Stuart McNamara (Labour) warned a scrutiny meeting just over a year ago: “If a venture like this failed the council would not have the financial reserves to bail itself out. It would also without doubt bankrupt the council and where will that leave tenants?”

And Cllr Zena Brabazon (Labour) said: “Most of us don’t have a deep understanding, but we’ve got the point that public land will turn into private land.

 Kober and her associates enjoyed corporate hospitality worth £770 from companies bidding to get the £2 billion contract. This included a dinner at the exclusive MIPIM property conference in Cannes, France.

The Labour Party withdrew its support for HDV recently after the Blairites lost their majority on the party’s National Executive Committee and after some pressure Kober agreed to stand down prior to the coming local elections in May.

The right-wing media are predictably championing Kober as a victim of left-wing Momentum bullies and sexists.

But Aditya Chakrabortty, a Guardian columnist who is a long-term resident of Haringey ironically says: “I’ve just been reading about the most terrifying place. For weeks, this ‘toxic’ neighbourhood with its ‘poisonous’ atmosphere has been all over the front pages and columns. It’s a land of revolutionary politics, of ‘ruthless attacks’ and ‘purges’. Hordes of Trotskyists reportedly roam its high streets – like wildebeest, if they only swapped the majesty of the Serengeti for suburban pound shops. It sounds, frankly, dreadful”  to finally refute this picture, saying: “It’s just the locals taking back control.”

He added: “Something bigger is going on here than a little poetic licence over one local authority – something that makes it important for anyone, anywhere who wants a different politics from the dross we’ve been served up by New Labour and Tories alike. Between them, the right-wing press and the Labour right are targeting Haringey in a proxy war against Corbyn.

“It makes an ideal spot: it’s where he was councillor for almost a decade before going into parliament, and it’s just a few minutes from his home.”

Hopefully this trend will continue and other Labour local authorities with plans in the pipeline to demolish council estates and replace them with luxury developments for the wealthy will also be halted.

 London Borough of Lambeth comes to mind. On Monday, Lambeth Council’s cabinet gathered to vote through Homes for Lambeth, the private company it has set up to demolish six estates – Knights Walk, South Lambeth, Fenwick, Westbury, Central Hill and Cressingham Gardens – and build and manage private homes on the cleared sites.

Even the location of the meeting ought to have served as a warning that the council can’t be trusted with construction projects.

This was the first day of full operation in Brixton Town Hall after an 18-month closure for a refit that was supposed to have cost £50million but is likely to end up coming in at an eye-watering £150million, or perhaps even more.

Reports last year concerning one of Lambeth’s earlier gentrification projects suggested that every new flat built on what used to be the Aylesbury Estate had been snapped up by wealthy foreign investors.

Housing benefit cuts endanger young people

By New Worker correspondent

 

PROTESTERS gathered in Parliament Square last Saturday 1st April, to demand the Government restore housing benefit rights to young people between the ages of 18 and 25.

The protest was timed to coincide with the cut coming into force, which will leave an estimated 10,000 young people at risk of eviction and homelessness.

Homelessness has doubled in Britain since 2010 under the Coalition and Tory governments, and the new measures will make the situation a lot worse.

The Tory policy assumes that young people have the option to continue living with their parents but in many cases that is just not so. Some have been brought up in care and do not have parental homes to go to. Others may have been thrown out of the family home, for example for coming out as gay or lesbian.

Some have left homes where they were abused, and some young people are themselves parents and trying to rear young children.

The Tories claim that exceptions are made for young people who are ‘vulnerable’, but that is a very elastic term and is applied by local authorities that are desperately short of funding and looking to reduce costs as a priority.

Many could end up on the streets, resulting in an array of other issues such as crime, prostitution and addiction amongst other things.

Lambeth to bulldoze council estate

THE LONDON Borough of Lambeth decided on 23^rd March to demolish the Central Hill housing estate in Upper Norwood. The estate houses 2,000 residents in 450 homes built between 1966 and 1974.

Architect Rosemary Stjernstedt designed Central Hill, and the estate is famous for its integration with the natural environment and spectacular views over the city.

The council claims this demolition is for regeneration but the residents about to lose their homes say it is for gentrification and they will not be able to afford to live in the new homes that will be built there.

A battle over the regeneration project has been raging now for two years between the council and the residents, who say they are being forced out of their homes.

This battle came to a head in a public meeting on Thursday 23^rd March. The Labour-led council cabinet outlined its final proposals for Central Hill to a packed meeting room in a community centre near Stockwell. There was a heavy police presence and even children had their bags searched by security before being allowed into the meeting.

In heated exchanges, residents accused the council of being “liars” and “social cleansers”. One woman talked of the “anxiety” and “mental torture” that the council’s plans were causing residents.

But Lambeth Council denied all these claims, with its Estate Regeneration Manager claiming that it had gone “above and beyond” its legal obligations.

Residents told The Canary they felt that the councillors’ attitude towards them was “disgraceful” and that, throughout the process of regeneration, the council had never consulted them properly.

But at the end of the meeting, emotions from the residents spilled over. The council took the decision to go ahead with its plans – Central Hill estate will therefore be demolished.

Many residents were angry and many left the meeting in tears. Some called the council meeting “an utter fucking sham”, “shocking”, and said that the panel “couldn’t look us in the eye”.

Some of the residents are seeking a judicial review of the decision, claiming that the decision was made two years ago and the consultation process was a sham.