Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Hawes+Curtis plan breaches Mayor's need for affordable housing
Just had a look at their plans, for the Planning Meeting this Thursday.
I would have thought that the plan is disqualified as their provision of anything but private sale is inadequate. The mayor's manifesto says 'I’ll work with boroughs to deliver on my target of half of all new homes being genuinely affordable'. I don't know how much of his manifesto has been confirmed as policy but that is his target.
"The viability assessment submitted with the application sets out that no affordable housing can viably be provided [the usual starting position]. The independent viability assessment that was commissioned by the Council did not agree with this position and subsequently the provision of 12%, equating to 16 shared ownership units with the NHS facility or 17.3% equating to 26 shared ownership units if a commercial unit is proposed has been proposed. This is confirmed to be the maximum reasonable amount of affordable housing."
So where is the genuinely affordable housing in this scheme?
Tags for Forum Posts: 590-598 Green Lanes, hawes & curtis
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Charlotte A on
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Loads of poorly built housing estates including huge high rises, most of which are being demolished, and pre-fabs. How about we create a pre-fab community on one of the parks? It's not like there's a whole lot of room elsewhere. Also, the population has increased by tens of millions since 1945.
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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I grew up in a prefab and then in a really sound well-designed council house that's still standing. There was a huge housing emergency that was treated as such, not privatised into Anything Goes for developers. The embarrassing towers arrived in the 60s in a different political climate. The solution to the housing problem in the southeast is political not financial.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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The official population is not even 10 million!
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Fowler on
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I'm not sure what the "official population" of London is right now, but I think that Charlotte A was referring to the population of the UK, which I have pointed out in a post here went from around 50 million in 1951 to 63 million now. That isn't "tens of millions", but is still quite a significant increase.
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Yes, it's an increase of over 20% in 50 years. The population of London is something like 8.4 million, the highest it's been since 1939.
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Pre-fabs were intended as a short-term, rapidly fabricated and constructed, solution to the serious housing shortage in London and other cities due to bombing in WW2. Remarkably, some still survive; and, whilst they were fairly basic, most people who lived in them liked them. There was a great deal of building of new homes in the fifties and sixties, and in many years 500,000 new homes were built in the UK. When Harold Macmillan was Housing Minister, in Eden's government, this figure was achieved, and it continued when Macmillan was PM, and under Douglas-Home and Wilson. You are incorrect in stating that there were "huge high rises" and "poorly built housing estates". Most of the blocks of flats built in the fifties and the early sixties were not more than 6-8 stories, and many are still doing good service today. The move to high rises started around 1965, when "slum clearance" projects left huge open areas in which high rise blocks of flats were constructed. While some of these had faults, many of their problems were due to a failure to provide security at the entrance level and in the common areas. Subsequently, many such high rise blocks were taken over by private companies who tidied them up, introduced security (concierge), and they are now quite desirable. Most of the council housing estates that were built from the sixties provided good homes and a favourable environment for people to live. There were some notable examples which were badly designed and with a poor understanding of human interaction (deck-access blocks, for example), and it is true that the worst of these have been torn down. However, a lot of the housing stock that was built in the fifties and sixties is still doing good service (60 or more years later); I'm not sure a lot of the housing that has been built since the eighties is likely to be as durable. As for population growth, between 1951 and the present, the UK population has gone from 50 million to 63 million - hardly "tens of millions since 1945". As for space (i.e. land) for new housing, there is plenty of land. The amount of the UK that is built on is around 5% of the total. The housing problem in the UK (especially London) is due to the retreat of government from building public housing, since the 1980s, which has created shortages and huge price rises. Charlotte A - you should really read up on the facts, before making ill-informed comments. Housing shortages, especially of _genuinely_ affordable homes, are a very serious problem which is blighting the lives of millions of people in the UK. Finding a solution is not aided by a lack of knowledge or understanding of the history of public housing since WW2.
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Of course people liked pre-fabs, especially if they were displaced from one room in a tenement with one shared loo per building. It doesn't mean they were high quality housing. And 6-8 stories is what people on this forum are currently complaining about, in fact they're complaining about 4 stories. If the housing's needed, how do you build it if there isn't enough space except upwards?
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I think if you actually bother to check what people who lived in pre-fabs thought, they liked them (and not just because what they had moved from was poor quality, slum housing). No-one is suggesting they were "high quality housing"; if you read my post, you'll see that I said they were fairly basic. As for the height of new housing blocks, people are complaining about a block of eight stories in an area where most of the housing is two/three stories. No-one is complaining about building tower blocks in (for example) Tottenham Hale. Also, you fail to understand that the shortage of affordable housing is not due to lack of space - even in Greater London there is plenty of "brown field" land that could be built on. The problem is an unwillingness by government to invest money in social housing, because they fear that will reduce the ridiculously high house prices, which will upset the Daily Mail readership.
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They'd also just been through 6 years of war, spent the next decade on rationing, and were more willing to get on with things than people are nowadays.
People are complaining about pretty much all the new building developments in Haringey if you go through all the threads.
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Can we bring the discussion back round to the realities of where we are now, which is the 21st century. It's all well and good to say "As for space (i.e. land) for new housing, there is plenty of land" - there may be outside of London but where we need the housing is inside London where land is at a premium and costs are astronomical. The concept that we can afford to build dinky Victorianesque terraced streets in areas like Harringay is just la-la
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The impetus after the war was to "build the Tories out of London" I believe. Margaret Hodge, in an outrageous piece of Gerrymandering, had Islington Council buy up Georgian terraces in the 80s if you'd like a similar example.
So now what is the impetus for them to build "moar" social housing when pretty much 50% of inner London households are in council run blocks or are genuine council tenants? They don't "need" any more "affordable" housing in Tottenham to stay in power.
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Wow, John, amazing theory! I'd remind you that while Labour were in government from 1945-1951, the Conservatives were in power (and thus in control of housing policy) from then until 1964. So it would be quite odd if the impetus was "to build the Tories out of London", because for 13 of the 19 years it was the Tories who were in control of housing policy. I have no idea what happened in Islington in the 80s, but I can tell you that gentrification started in Islington around 1969, and by the eighties was well advanced. So it would seem a bit odd if someone in Labour was trying to "build the Tories out of Islington" in the eighties, and a bit too late. If you want to see real gerrymandering, look at Westminster Council under Lady Porter (still hiding from British justice in Israel). I'm also confused about your comments on housing and development in Haringey (including Tottenham). Last time I looked, the council was Labour, so I'm not sure how much influence the Tories have on housing policy; and it is actually Labour that are in power in Haringey, not the Tories. If you want to blame someone for the lack of new social housing in the borough, blame the Labour council.
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