Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

Given that we have both a housing and cost of living crisis (and further that Haringey is an unaffordable area to anyone on average or local authority wages) it seems mad to me that a scheme to provide 46 Council homes 'soon' has been stopped half built for half a year. The reinforced concrete framework went up last year plus a few bits of insulation and brickwork but since then nothing. This is a scheme between Haringey Council and the Paul Simon Magic group but perhaps the magic has gone. Does anyone know why?

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We don't have a housing crisis. We have an immigration crisis. Several million immigrants since Tony Blair's regime arrived has created the housing shortage, overwhelmed the NHS and swamped other public services. I'm no xenophobe, in fact I am an immigrant myself. Limited immigration to fill high skilled gaps in the economy is a positive thing for the country.  Uncontrolled immigration creates the problems we are now experiencing.

Very pleased to hear that you're not a xenophobe, Cem. but let's be clear that the housing crisis is much more complex than you suggest. Most informed thought on the issue puts the blame almost entirely on government housing policies over the last quarter century. The strapline of the Financial Times article, "Who caused the UK’s housing crisis?" blames both Labour and the Conservatives. It runs, "Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy is often blamed but New Labour policies contributed to low affordability and price inflation". The group who are not to blame for our housing woes are immigrants.

As per our T&C, let's not derail the poster's thread. I'm sure there's a place for an informed, fact-based exchange on the housing crisis, but not here.

Hello Site Admin - Understood. I wasn't blaming individual immigrants - that's a dark path and it's not their fault.

I hope the building on West Green Rd is completed quickly. It's not fun competing for a place to live and raise abfamily.

I'm an immigrant too, let's pull up that ladder!

I just wanted to react to this nonsense that Cem is spouting in his post, even if it takes attention away from the main post.

IMMIGRATION IS IN NO WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE UK HOUSING CRISIS AND ANYONE SAYING IT IS IS ENGAGING IN XENOPHOBIC TROPES!

There are some things you just cannot let pass. Such generalising & stigmatising claims against immigrants are abhorrent, even when the person making the claims are of immigrant origin themselves.

I am prepared to shout this again and again and again. Hijacking the question is of just so secondary importance. I was enraged as soon as I read the nonsense! 

There. 

It's not nonsense. Demand for housing simply outstrips supply. And demand had risen because of immigration. It's not xenophobic at all. Simple statement of fact. Nobody is stigmatising immigrants. 

Demand has risen because the UK is great for property investment. It's worthwhile for rich people from around the world to buy property in the UK and leave it mostly empty as prices rise and that's what they do. Ironically, they don't have to live here to do this.

And why is the UK great for property investment? Because continually increasing demand means property prices rise faster than other assets. 

I'm truly stunned at your over reaction. It's no wonder there is never a proper public discourse about immigration, infrastructure and population sustainability when people react like that to a reasonable statement of fact. 

JJB -
A "Shout" in block letters on a locally focused website tells us the strength of your views.

Unfortunately it doesn't advance any argument and probably doesn't change minds.
It might I hope, suggest to a few people that there's an issue provoking anger and passion which needs some generous nuanced dialogue

It appears that the Red House development is being used as a proxy for what some people prefer to discuss. A false signpost to what Cem rightly called a "Dark Path". As the grandson of immigrants myself, I'm proud to live in and celebrate our amazing city built by and on immigration and trade. (Which pride does not deny or forget wars, colonialism and the hubris and harms of empire.  

We live a few minutes walk westward from the route of the Roman Ermyn Street. A little further west is a river which once marked the boundary between Saxon and Viking immigrants who'd settled. Archaeologists recently dug up some Saxon pottery shards.

But let's focus for now on the Red House.

Sorry, but it is a wilfully led financial bubble to rise prices and ease money laundering, and blaming it, not individually, on migrants and asylum seekers is much more than despicable. Please, rethink about your words and delete your offensive comments. Thank you.

The delay in  making progress on the Red House development is an observable fact.
Speculation about "a wilfully led financial bubble" or some "money laundering" is - as far as I am aware in the absence of evidence, simply speculation.  Or am I wrong?

It is also a fact that there were a list of dubious property transactions which took place under the previous Haringey Labour administration. The Red House does appears on that list. Specifically because of the appalling delay.
However as now an ex-Labour Party member, I am sad to say that incompetence, hubris, and stupidity among some members of that administration seem a highly plausible explanation. Though of course I have an open mind should concrete evidence emerge of "bubbles",  "laundering" or any other  types of cleansing, washing, rinsing, tidying away.

Sometimes it is the absence of evidence which is whiffy. As in a reference in a Sherlock Holmes story about a "dog which did not bark". And by coincidence Clive Carter has recently been refused freedom of access to information on other dodgy dealing under the previous Haringey administration, the Alexandra House purchase and the secret property boards.

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