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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

'Haringey Labour councillors vote to press ahead with controversial £2bn HDV regeneration plan'

Tags for Forum Posts: haringey development vehicle, hdv

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I wish I was surprised. I remind you again that because there's only one vote in it, the deselection shenanigans in St Ann's four years ago were important to this.

Haringey are having another consultation starting February about the regeneration of 6,400 additional dwellings in Wood Green

This time it seems to be called AAP

This is an article from the New York Times about Lendlease's activities in the States.  They paid a fine to avoid criminal charges for overbilling and for ignoring the City's rules on minority contractors.  If this is a representation of their business ethics, I seriously cannot see Haringey councillors being able to regulate such a company.  Utterly delusional.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/nyregion/lend-lease-expected-to-a...

That's extremely subjective and unlike Annie who linked to the New York Times above, you have nothing to back it up.

OssiesD why have you changed your mind? I still think the HDV sounds like the much needed regeneration that the area needs

hi Ossies. I'd say we should go for it now because otherwise it will never happen and the area will just get worse and worse and people will leave. I already find it thoroughly depressing.  I don't think the Carillion case will apply as Carillions problem was that they overleveraged and didn't have any assets. Landlease would buy land, so I think that would be different. Of course the risk for them is increasing as Brexit is likely to bring a further economic downturn, and property prices in London are already going down. I agree, if the Momentum take over the council the people they say they are standing up for will be a lot worse off..

Mimi I'm curious about your comments. Some questions if I may. 

 The HDV

Can I please ask you what you meant by:
"... it will never happen and the area will just get worse and worse and people will leave".
What is the 'it' that you want to happen? What does 'it' involve for people now living in Haringey, particularly in Tottenham?

Who will leave? Normally people actually move in and out of Haringey all the time. 

Could you please explain the sequence of events you see happening with the HDV that will produce the desirable changes you'd like?

Is your home within the HDV redlined area, Mimi?  If so I'd be interested to talk to you. What have the Council reps told you will happen? When will it happen?  If and when you have to move is it a temporary or permanent move? Where will you go? When will you new home be built?

If you have been given "guarantees", are they legally enforceable? Against whom? What are the details? What happens if the title to your property is sold-on? Or if your lease is assigned? What happens if they sell the ground rent to make a quick profit and your ground landlord lives abroad? These are real problems I've had to deal with as a former councillor.

Can you afford a lawyer to advise you?  If so, has your lawyer been given access to the thousand or so secret redacted pages of the draft contract and plans covering your neighbourhood. If not, aren't you being asked to agree a 'pig-in-a-poke'? 

   My Own View

I have no ideological opposition to small-scale, limited-time joint ventures with commercial companies, especially if that's the only practicable option available. Haringey has been contracting with private and voluntary sector bodies for many decades.

But I am opposed to risky deals which "bet the farm". As far as I know, no other Council in the country favours a development "partnership" with the range and on the huge scale proposed for the HDV. An unaccountable "vehicle" with the brief to demolish thousands of homes, rented, leased, freehold, and housing association. Plus hundreds of business premises. Plus two or perhaps three schools; a children's nursery; at least two libraries, and other community facilities. And including the Civic Centre and plus main administrative buildings. All within a medium to longer-term contract with a transnational corporation.

Unlike other councils, Haringey's HDV "Joint Vehicle" is not proposed for a Greenfield site, Nor "brownfield" (e.g. an abandoned former industrial site.) Nor is it to build homes on underused carparks. All examples from round the country.

  Momentum

The idea that the council is being "taken over" by Momentum is a fiction. What's really happened is that more ordinary democratic socialists have joined the Labour Party. They turned-up to at one-member-one-vote meetings to select Labour candidates for the wards where they live.
(By the way, the phrase "democratic socialist" is what it says on my  membership card. Put there under Tony Blair in April 1995.)

What's also happened is that there's been a vigorous debate within two local Constituency Labour Parties about the HDV, and the majority of local Labour Party members are now against it. As are our two MPs.

So are the LibDems, the Green Party, and various small socialist groups. It's not Momentum but the HDV which has drawn us together to listen to and share ideas with one another. I am proud, for example, to stand together with Rev Paul Nicolson who is not a member of any Political Party.  He explained his involvement in the campaign because of his Christian beliefs.

So many words, so little substance. The HDV replaces c.1000 homes with c. 5000. That’s a factor of 5 in terms of housing stock. Unless you favour the status quo I can’t see how this doesn’t make sense in terms of the supply of housing - one of the defining issues of my generation and one of the major contributors to wealth inequality. Unlike you I am kind of new to how local government works, and not from this country - and even to a novice like myself it is quite obvious after a brief Google search that much of what is said above is either exaggeration or lies. Maybe you are 100% right and Google, the tax dodging ‘transnational’ architect of the zeitgeist is behind this??? 

My opposition is not based purely upon the forced gentrification, which could be seen as subjective anyway. My opposition to this is based upon the process. The faux tender with Lendlease as winners (all three bidders were clients of Peter Bingle's Terrapin). The boozing and shmoozing with £50 lunches was unseemly considering the impact the HDV would have upon some residents of the borough. The promises consciously made on radio by the leader of the council which where not actually in writing, which she must have known. Even the libdems are against it on the principle of selling off of government land.

The HDV didn't need to be done that way.

Hi Kotkas

What I posted earlier was mostly questions - polite requests for information.
I did make a few statements as well. Mostly simple and I'd have thought non-contentious and easily checkable statements of fact.
I appreciate that for some people it seems counter intuitive to say that there isn't a simple relationship between building more houses and making more homes available and affordable to Haringey residents. If that's your viewpoint, you're entitled to hold and express it. And we can agree to differ.

If you or anyone else is interested in why this may be so, I recommend reading say, Prof Danny Dorling, or Prof Ann Pettifor. The latter had an article on the topic published two days ago. It's called: "Why building more homes will not solve Britain’s housing crisis". Here's the link.

On the other hand if your purpose in posting in this thread is just to accuse me of lying, then why waste your own and other people's time? It's just pointless trolling, isn't it?

Unfortunately not much of analysis in the article stands up. Much of the supply/demand analysis is based on averages, which is meaningless due to the fact that only one part of the equation (the demand side) is mobile and the other isn't. Therefore overall dwellings numbers don't necessarily mean increase in supply if they are built in areas where they are less likely to be inhabited. You know the whole thing about a man with their feet in the freezer and head in the oven - on average they feel great!

Also - the fact that the rate of house building is greater than the rate of growth of households doesn't necessarily mean that the supply/demand curves have met. So overall, pretty flawed, partisan non-analysis of the issue. I won't even go into the solutions they propose... As for exposing your exaggerations - not my purpose at all. I just tend to have a really extreme reaction to 'alternative' facts.

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