HS2: Too Late For Some

Stan Passmore, 2013

When I met Stan Passmore and his friend George Phillips in 2013 they were both facing the prospect of the demolition of their homes on the Regent's Park Estate, to make way for the HS2 high speed rail terminus at the adjacent Euston station.

George Phillips, 2013

Stan, then aged 87, had lived in his fourth floor flat in the Eskdale block since 1961.  His near neighbour George, then aged 94, had lived in his since it was built in 1955. Both told me they hoped to die before the bulldozers arrived. George achieved his wish not long after, but Stan, who died earlier this month, lived just long enough to see his former home turned into a pile of rubble.  

Eskdale (pink block on right), Regent's Park Estate, 2013

Euston is now one giant construction site. Many hundreds of homes have been demolished, lives disrupted, businesses closed, graves dug up, ancient trees felled. And yet, even at this late stage in the progress of this misconceived project, the politicians are still debating whether to proceed. Whatever they decide, it will be too late for Eskdale and its former residents. More pictures here. More words here.

Demolishing South Kilburn

South Kilburn Estate, 22-05-18

On South Kilburn Estate new concrete shells are rising from the rubble that was once Gloucester House and Durham Court. I've written before about Brent Council's 15 year estate regeneration scheme, and the implications of the changes of tenure that are at its core, but none of that captures the extraordinary visual impact made by the tearing down of people's homes, whatever the tenure. The most recent demolition phase lasted around six months. A bigger selection of images from that period is here. More words and pictures here.

South Kilburn, 22-3-18

South Kilburn Estate, 1-5-18

 

South Kilburn, 22-5-18

Lendlease: Someone Has Blundered

Elephant Park construction site, Southwark

Lendlease's controversial deal with Haringey Council may be looking precarious, but the developer is still going strong in Southwark, where it is replacing 1194 social rented flats on the once publicly owned Heygate Estate with a paltry 74.  A further 500 of a total of 2500 new homes in its Elephant Park scheme will be let at so-called 'affordable' rents, and the rest sold off. Purchase of a one-bed, shared-ownership flat requires a minimum household income of around £60K.
 

The now demolished Heygate Estate, 2002

The London Clearances (continued)

Walterton Road, North Paddington 1975

My first useful work as a photographer came about through involvement with housing campaigners at the tail end of the slum clearance programmes of the 1960s and 70s. In London, streets of poorly maintained, privately rented Victorian terraces were being torn down and replaced by a brave new world of modern homes in publicly owned estates of concrete apartment blocks.

Forty years on, that world has turned full circle. Now it is the 'castles in the sky' that are coming down, streets are all the rage, and council housing, now renamed 'social', is struggling to survive.

Gloucester House and the rubble of Durham Court, South Kilburn Estate, 2018

Across the road from the sub-standard flat that was my home back in 1975 (toilet and cold water sink on the shared landing, no bathroom), work has begun on Phase 2b of Brent Council's 15 year South Kilburn Estate regeneration scheme. Demolition of the low rise Durham Court blocks is underway, and the now deserted 18 storey Gloucester House awaits the wrecking crew.

If all goes according to plan, by 2029, when the final phase is scheduled for completion, 2400 new homes will have been built, 1200 for private sale, and 1200 let at social rent to existing secure tenants.

Partly demolished blocks, Durham Court, South Kilburn Estate

The buildings and landscaping completed so far are impressive, a big improvement on the bleak brutalist concrete they have replaced, and the scheme has attracted much praise. The council has also been lauded for its financial strategy, using income from the private sales to fund the homes let at social rents.

So what's not to like? In a convincing piece on Haringey's controversial partnership deal with Australian developer Lendlease on the Red Brick blog, Steve Hilditch argues that the most straightforward criterion for assessing the wave of regeneration deals being done by councils across the capital should be the number of social rented homes there will be at the end of the process.

“Thousands of mainly social rented homes will be knocked down and thousands of mainly private homes will be built. There will be many more homes overall, but, how will the proposed mix of market and sub-market homes tackle homelessness and the needs of people on the waiting list?  The type and tenure of new homes is as important as how many homes are built in total. Social rent remains the only truly affordable option for many people on lower incomes.”

On that measure, the figures for South Kilburn don't stack up. By 2029, 2400 new homes will have replaced 1610. Of the latter, 1420 were occupied by secure tenants and 190 by leaseholders. It's hard to know whether the prices leaseholders are getting for their compulsorily purchased homes match the prices demanded for the new (unlikely). But it is certain that 1420 secure tenants will not fit into the 1200 homes available for social rent. It is probable that enough of them will have been rehoused elsewhere to make the scheme work, but the net effect will be to reduce the number of social rent homes available across the borough, and to clear even more people on low or average incomes out of central London.

Kilburn Quarter, completed phase 2a of South Kilburn Estate regeneration scheme

Brent, like many others London councils, has been forced into this trade-off between private sales and publicly owned social rentals by central government funding cuts and the long-term disempowerment of local authorities. The new estate looks like it's going to be a nice place to live, and will provide much improved homes for the tenants who are rehoused on it - albeit at higher so-called 'target' social rents.  It will also increase the number of homes available for private sale and market rental – in itself not a bad thing, as long as they're occupied once bought. It's just a pity it won't be of any help in cutting the waiting list and housing the homeless.  More pictures here. More words and pictures here and here.

No Resting Place

At the beginning of this year, prompted by what seemed to be a recent significant rise in the numbers of people sleeping rough in central London, I set about documenting some of the many dark doorways and uninviting corners in which anxious, disturbed or destitute men and women now spend their days and nights.

I decided to focus on the places, rather than the people who use them, in order to highlight the harsh locations in which rough sleepers find themselves, without identifying the often vulnerable individuals who use them.  Not all the photographs succeed in doing this - parts of faces are visible in one or two. 


 
The pictures were taken on and off from January through March, and now the Greater London Authority has released figures for the numbers of rough sleepers recorded in the capital during that time. I was not surprised. They showed an increase of 7% on the same period last year - to 2,751 individuals over the three months. Nationally, rough sleeping has risen by 37% since 2010.

Each person has their own story, but together the bodies trying to keep warm on cold hard pavements are the most visible symptoms of the current crises in housing and adult social care provision in one of the richest countries in the world.  Shameful.  More pictures here.

More Market Failures

Nine Elms regeneration zone

 There is a striking disjunction between the desperate shortage of affordable housing in the capital, and the extraordinary panorama of cranes, pile-drivers and high-rise residential blocks in various states of construction visible from almost anywhere in the city with a view.

Even more extraordinary, at least to someone unfamiliar with London's dysfunctional property market, is the fact that many of the newly completed apartments transforming the skyline are empty, bought off-plan by overseas investors as convenient assets in which to stash their cash. But now it appears that all is not well in the luxury homes trade.

Battersea Power Station

Last month Morgan Stanley warned that prices of new, upmarket London flats could fall by as much as 20% this year, and the International Business Times reported that Chinese investors who bought apartments off-plan in the Battersea power station development are having second thoughts now the time has come to pay the balance on their relatively small up-front deposits. Those in the know are clearly expecting trouble: although pre-tax profits at the estate agent Foxtons only fell by 3% last year, investors knocked 33% of the share price. If these are the first signs of a bursting bubble, it would be good news for anyone who thinks of four walls and a roof as home, rather than an offshore shelter for their dodgy money.

More pictures here.

Construction of Alto Apartments, Wembley

The Greater London Clearances (again)

Cressingham Gardens residents protest outside Lambeth Town Hall, July 2015

Last night's decision by Lambeth Council to proceed with demolition of Cressingham Gardens estate in Brixton is of a piece with similar 'regeneration' schemes across the capital. To maximise the use of increasingly valuable central London real estate, the Labour council plans to demolish 306 homes to make way for 464 new ones. Most of the 158 additional units will be sold off, with only 15% let at council rents.

Tenants and leaseholders in the 1960s low-rise blocks bordering Brockwell Park fear they will be priced out of the area many have lived in for decades. Meanwhile the council is caught between a rock and a hard place by central government funding cuts. On paper at least, the scheme looks better than those currently under way in Tory-led Barnet, but that is no consolation to the residents, who stand to lose their homes with no certainty over where they will be put during and after the rebuild, or at what cost.

The trend towards displacement of social renting from an ever-widening area of the city is undesirable for a whole host of reasons – including the break-up of long-established communities, unsustainable pressures on public services in the outlying boroughs, and rising transport costs for low-paid workers forced to commute long distances. Resolving all this cannot be done by the local authorities, Labour or Tory, now left to make the best of a bad job. It requires massive changes in central government housing policy. Don't hold your breath.

Cressingham Gardens residents protest outside Lambeth Town Hall, July 2015

Regeneration - or Social Cleansing?

Private security guards prevent protesters entering Hendon Town Hall through a window

Barnet Council's apparent total disregard for the welfare of its less well-heeled residents continues to astonish. Yesterday, tenants who have lost their homes on Sweets Way estate in Whetstone, and tenants and leaseholders who face eviction when West Hendon estate is 'regenerated', were refused access to a council meeting in Hendon Town Hall.

Pretty much all services in the borough have been privatised, so handing over West Hendon to a consortium of Barratt Homes and Metropolitan Housing Partnership, and permitting Annington Homes to demolish Sweets Way, is very much in character. But failing to provide appropriate accommodation for the hundreds of households who have lost, or are about to lose, their homes of many years is inexcusable. All this is being done in the name of regeneration. The protesters call it 'social cleansing'. More pictures here, and more on Sweets Way here.

Esmaa Guernaoui, evicted from Sweets Way estate

Private security guards prevent protesters entering Hendon Town Hall

What Goes Up Might Come Down

As high-rise blocks are demolished on estates in South Kilburn and Barking (below), 2818 new homes in the skyscrapers of the former London 2012 Olympic Athletes' Village in Stratford are awaiting their first occupants (above).

The difference between those coming down and those going up is not so much architectural, as proprietorial. Private housing is replacing public: 1439 of the apartments in East Village, as it is now known, are being offering for private rent by Get Living London, a joint venture between the Qatari sovereign wealth fund and property company Delancey. The remainder are 'affordable' homes for sale, shared-ownership, or rent by Triathlon Homes, a public-private partnership.

Only time will tell whether ownership status is more important than architecture and the strength, or otherwise, of the local economy – or whether East Village is destined to become a densely packed, down-at-heel, buy-to-let opportunity earmarked for a future wrecker's ball.  More pictures here.

Slum Clearance Revisited

Earlier this month Brent Council started demolition of two 1960s tower blocks on South Kilburn Estate, part of a £66.5 million redevelopment scheme that will see them replaced by 229 low-rise apartments for sale and rent.

One of the 18 storey towers, Fielding House (above), used to fill the view from the window of a flat I once rented on the opposite side of Kilburn Park Road. Back in 1975 the towers were a recent addition to the NW6 landscape, and the Victorian terrace whose first floor I part-occupied was scheduled for compulsory purchase and demolition by the Greater London Council.

Calling it a flat is being kind. It wasn't self-contained, the toilet was shared with the tenant upstairs, it had no bathroom, and the only running water was a cold tap above a Butler sink on the landing. At the time such conditions were commonplace, particularly in the private rented sector, and the towers were part of a slum clearance programme designed to sweep them away and provide good quality public housing for all who needed it.

Almost forty years on, the Victorian terrace is still standing, and it is the towers that are coming down. In a complete reversal, not only is high-rise making way for low (the 229 new South Kilburn apartments will be in buildings with traditional mansion block facades and six or seven floors), but public sector housing is making way for private: 126 of them will be sold off, and only 103 will be let. 'Private good, public bad' is the mantra now.  More pictures here.

Tenant in an unfit kitchen, Kilburn Park Road, 1982

Market Failures

The Guardian's exposé of the extraordinary state of 'Billionaire's Row' – The Bishops Avenue in north London – is yet another reminder of just how dysfunctional the UK housing market has become. Mansions worth together around £350 million are lying empty (above), many decaying into serious dereliction, whilst the government's 'bedroom tax' is forcing large numbers of those at the other end of the 'property ladder' to quit the capital, often leaving behind family, friends, schools and job opportunities.

Boris Johnson's answer? To charge owners of empty properties worth over £2 million a 50% Council Tax surcharge. Or maybe 150%. The Mayor isn't very good on detail. That should really hit the owners hard. The rate for the top Council Tax band in Barnet is £2832.40, so the surcharge would be either £1416.20, or £4248.60, depending on what he means. One of the Bishops Avenue mansions, Dryades, until recently the property of the Pakistan Minister of Privatisation (clearly a post with a generous salary), was bought for £12 million in 2007 and, according to the Guardian, is currently believed to be worth £30 million. That's a profit of £18 million in seven years, or just over £2.5 million a year. A few thousand pounds of Council Tax isn't going to make much of a dent in that.

Interventions by this and previous governments aimed at addressing failures at the opposite end of the market have been no better. The other streets where boarded-up houses lie empty, and bulldozed vacant lots stand unattended, are the result of the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder programme in Oldham (below), Liverpool and several other northern cities, started by Labour and prematurely shutdown by the coalition. Both bad decisions.

The abysmal record of government interventions at both ends of the property market highlights the failure of market-based solutions to a problem that requires social and economic planning, not blind faith in the beneficence of laissez-faire profiteering. More pictures here.

Why Should There Be Losers?

Yesterday's Queen's Speech confirmed the government's intention to proceed with the High Speed 2 Euston to Birmingham rail line, despite opposition from affected residents and businesses along its route, and unanswered questions about many of the details.

The transport case, the economic benefit, the cost, the precise route, and the location of new stations are all in dispute. Only last month, the publication of revised plans for the Euston terminal did nothing to meet the objections of the local council, nor mitigate the fears of residents in the surrounding area.

HS2 Ltd, the government-owned company charged with developing the new line, scrapped a plan to demolish and rebuild Euston station, and replaced it with plans for what Sarah Hayward, Leader of Camden Council, described as “a shed being bolted on to an existing lean-to”. The new proposal significantly reduces the regeneration and development potential of the scheme. The original allowed for multi-storey blocks of offices and apartments to be built on top of the station - presumably that can't be done on a shed roof.

Hundreds of tenants living in blocks on the nearby Regent's Park Estate scheduled for demolition still have no indication as to where they might be rehoused. Many fear they will be offered alternative accommodation outside the borough, far from family, friends and workplaces.

Tenants, leaseholders and businesses in the streets immediately to the west of the station face a different threat. The roads have been 'safeguarded' – marked out as an access route within the construction zone – but the houses, shops and restaurants along them have not. Although some are no more than three or four metres from the likely construction site boundary, under current arrangements they stand to receive nothing for 10 years of disruption and blight. In rural areas outside the M25, residents within 120 metres of the new line will receive the full, unblighted market value of their property, and those within 60 metres an additional 10% bonus plus moving costs.

Why the unequal treatment? That's what the High Court wanted to know when it upheld a legal challenge to HS2's compensation consultation in March. Conspiracy theorists might point to the political colour of the wards around the station (red), and that of the rolling Home County landscapes further north (blue). The process will now have to be re-run.

Irrespective of the wisdom of the whole enterprise, the treatment of those directly affected seems grossly unfair. There will, of course, be beneficiaries – you can't spend £34 billion without somebody benefitting – but why should there be losers?

Above: Kathleen Ullah at her front door a few metres from the planned Euston construction site; below: Buckinghamshire. More pictures here.

Don't Applaud, Just Throw Money

Down the road from the Tate Modern gallery in Southwark, London, is an animatronic sculpture by the public art collective Greyworld. Monument to an Unknown Artist (above) looks out over cranes and the rapidly rising towers of a new residential development called Neo Bankside. Apartments in the blocks are on sale for prices ranging from £1m to £6.5m. A quick Google search (my Latin is rusty) reveals that the inscription on the monument - Non plaudite modo pecuniam jacite - translates as: Don't applaud, just throw money. Neat placement.

The New Localism

Last night Hammersmith & Fulham Council agreed to sell West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates to developer Capital and Counties, who intend to demolish them to make way for an £8 billion Earls Court regeneration scheme.

A very large majority of the residents of the 760 homes on the two estates are strongly opposed to the plan, and have put in a rival bid through a resident-controlled housing association, West Kensington & Gibbs Green Community Homes.

Despite the council's approval, the plan requires the go-ahead from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Which way will Eric Pickles jump? It would be a good opportunity for him to showcase the new localism his department has been championing so vociferously for the last couple of years. Will he rule for the local residents, or for Capital and Counties? His decision will finally reveal whether localism means real new powers for communities, or whether it's just business as usual. If it goes against them, the residents won't give up. It could be a long campaign. More photos here and here.

Another Way of Telling*

The ability of my point-and-shoot camera to record video was not a feature to which I had paid much attention until about three years ago, when I was asked to do some simple 'talking head' interviews to accompany a photo story. Since then HD video has become standard on professional DSLRs, and a growing number of photographers have begun to experiment with it, producing short movie and multimedia pieces. The form is ideally suited to the web, the dominant medium of the age, and it seems that more and more publications and organisations are commissioning this sort of work instead of stills.

The evidence is only anecdotal, but given the popularity and flexibility of online video, coupled with the negative impact on many photographers and writers of the ongoing shift from print to cyberspace, a move towards multimedia and video-based journalism makes a lot of sense. What are the implications?

Multi-skilling is not new to photographers who, over recent years, have had to adapt from film to digital and keep up with continual hardware and software upgrades, but shooting video is a substantial leap into a medium with some very different dimensions. For many, dealing with audio is a whole new ball game, as is getting to grips with video-editing software.

With regards to equipment, although the new DSLRs are capable of producing seductively high movie quality, they have some serious limitations as video cameras, particularly in relation to ergonomics and focussing. On many models monitoring and controlling sound quality requires clumsy workarounds. These factors make them very good for some purposes, and very bad for others, with implications for both the style and content of what can be done with them.

For freelancers whose incomes have already been hit by falling reproduction fees and fewer commissions, finance may be a problem. Even assuming ownership of an appropriate, video-enabled camera, there are significant additional costs: tripod heads, microphones, stands, editing software, hard drives and other bits and pieces. In my case, a more powerful graphics card was needed to run Final Cut Pro on my Mac.

For some people there may be another issue. In old-fashioned trade union jargon it was known as 'demarcation'. Are photographers taking the work of videographers and film-makers? We complain when regional newspaper employers send their writers out with cameras. Is this any different? As a photographer who writes, I've never known how to answer that question – other than to say that, with some notable exceptions, writers with cameras tend to produce pretty poor pictures.

In fact, the context of what we might call the 'new video' is very different. This is not newspaper owners trying to cut costs at the expense of jobs, but photojournalists – particularly freelancers - adapting to the enormous changes brought about by the growing dominance of the web. The content that has migrated from print to webpage has not done so unchanged, but is increasingly exploiting the richer possibilities of the digital medium, and is prompting a realignment of skills from all concerned in the process. There is a niche here for low-budget video and multimedia produced with a photojournalistic sensibility. Not cut-price BBC or Wardour Street, but something specifically suited to the new website-oriented universe.

Why am I writing this now? Because I've moved on from my point-and-shoot and recently completed a commission shot on a DSLR. The form offers another way of adding words to pictures, and I find it very attractive. Suddenly the subject has a voice. Although the maker still controls the final output, the balance of power is shifted. The video (above), about the reorganisation of Camden Council's housing repair programme, is really a piece of reportage, shot in much the same way I would have gone about a photo story. The subject may sound like the topic of a tedious Powerpoint presentation, but it really isn't: the voices of public service workers talking about what they do each day and the quality of the service they provide, are totally engaging. At just under nine minutes, it's probably a bit longer than a typical made-for-web piece – the target is often between two and five minutes - but it was shot to a brief, and around nine minutes was what was required.

For me, this is doing what I have always done - visual storytelling - using the most appropriate technology available. I'm still a photojournalist working on my own. I am not attempting the complexities open to a four-person film crew, but can offer instead a photojournalist's eye and understanding, and a cost more appropriate to the limited purpose at hand – in this case a showing at a conference and extended use on the council's intranet.

I don't think I'm taking anyone's bread from their mouths, or at least no more than any freelancer competing for work. The fact that I sometimes shoot stills and sometimes shoot video doesn't really make any difference. The internet is steadily reshaping the way journalism works, offering both threats and opportunities to those whose living depends on it. In the move away from print, much advertising revenue has gone AWOL. Although there is big money to be made on the web, not enough of it is filtering down to creators (particularly photographers) to compensate for that loss - the extraordinary proliferation of still imagery online has also contributed to devaluing its currency. It's an adapt-or-die situation. But it's not just necessity driving change: the new microphone in my bag has added another dimension to what I can do, and I really like it.

* apologies to John Berger

Consultation, Hammersmith & Fulham Style

Residents of West Kensington and Gibbs Green Estates were last night turned away from a consultation meeting called to discuss proposals to sell their estates to a private developer and demolish them. Hammersmith and Fulham council officers refused to address the residents as a group, insisting they queue outside a small side room to be seen individually.

The council wants to knock down 760 homes to make way for a grand Earls Court redevelopment scheme. The Residents' Associations are totally opposed, and plan to use forthcoming legislation to take over the estates and run them as a resident-controlled mutual.

The meeting – held at a local Holiday Inn - appeared to be an attempt at divide and rule tactics, but many more residents turned up than could be dealt with one at a time. A letter of objection was handed over, and most left without speaking to anyone other than their neighbours.

More information is available on Dave Hill's London Blog.

Housing Market Renewal update

Only a few weeks after I wrote about the Housing Market Renewal programme, the government cancelled it. There is no connection between the two events, and I don’t claim any credit. But despite its misguided premise, and consequences that have been disastrous for thousands of residents in the nine ‘Pathfinder’ areas across the north of England, its abrupt termination is not a good thing.

Its sudden demise leaves the areas in limbo, with street after street of tinned-up houses, property prices at near zero, communities destroyed, and the remaining residents left to struggle on in what looks like a war zone.

It is too late to rectify most of the damage, but the government could at least buy out any of those left behind who wish to move, at prices that make moving a realistic possibility. That means substantially more than current ‘market’ values.

More Housing Market Renewal photographs are available here.

Housing Market Renewal: another fine mess

The Derker district of Oldham has the misfortune to have been designated a Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder. The scheme, launched by New Labour in 2002, is the biggest programme of demolition since the slum clearances of the mid-twentieth century. In Derker, row after row of tinned-up houses stand empty, and newly-laid grass has already replaced many of the 588 two-up, two-down Victorian terrace homes scheduled for the bulldozers. According to Anna Minton, in her book Ground Control (which I strongly recommend), 400,000 properties in the nine Pathfinder areas across the north of England are destined to meet a similar fate by 2015.

Unlike the earlier slum clearances, the homes are not being knocked down because they are in poor condition. The programme was not designed to improve conditions for the current occupants, but to “correct” so-called “housing market failure” in order to attract a “better social mix”. The areas in question are all places which have seen major falls in employment over the last thirty or so years, a collapse of the local economy, and a consequent decline in population. Opponents have labelled the process “social cleansing”, and there has been widespread resistance from residents who do not want to move from homes they have lived in for decades, or see the break-up of their communities. The piles of rubble and the silent streets are the very visible sign of another attempt at a market-based solution to a problem that requires social and economic planning, not more laissez-faire profiteering. If the demolished houses are ever replaced, which seems increasingly unlikely in the present economic climate, the only people likely to benefit will be private developers.

Lynn Ogden (below, left, with her ex-neighbour Margaret Rowcroft) is the last remaining resident in Ramsey Street, where she has lived for 43 years. Despite a long campaign and a partially successful battle in the High Court, she believes it is now too late to save Derker. Almost everyone has left, worn down by years of uncertainty. It is not often that results of bad government policy are so starkly evident.



More Housing Market Renewal photographs are available here.