Fuck London

[IdleRich]

I read that with gated communities they tend not to make people feel safer, the effect is more that people adjust to feeling "normal" within the gate and feel worried when they are on the street in real public spaces and they have to interact with people that they know haven't been vetted or at least allowed to go there in service of someone who has.
Then again I lived in a gated community and I never felt like that so....

 

[RWY]

You don't find something slightly unpleasant about the idea of people who will feel that their life is tarnished by having to share a lift with someone who earns less than they do?

There is absolutely no point in me elaborating my thoughts on this particular question as it will only result in a pile on which won't achieve anything. I stand by what I said earlier - the current system of forcing private developers to incorporate a determined percentage of social/affordable housing into their developments is not fit for purpose and should be replaced entirely by way of a centrally planned system of providing social/affordable housing on the scale required to meet London's actual housing needs.

 

[RWY]

The lashing out at the concept of poor doors is just another entirely predictable iteration of the politics of envy, rather than a considered attempt to devise genuinely radical solutions to the actual problem of the provision of housing.

 

[john eden]

@RWY not a pile on but you seem a bit all over the place with this? A lot of people here will agree with you about a centrally planned system but we’re not in charge. And the people who are in charge reckon that they can’t afford the sort of system you’re suggesting. (Which is a “left” position so I’m unclear why you are irritated by the left).

So short of a radical restructuring of society we are stuck with forcing developers to include social housing - and because they are mainly driven by profit there will be struggles around getting the social housing elements to not be crap.

And some developments are better than others, already, and do not have poor doors/floors or playgrounds exclusively for the offspring of the rich.

 

[wild greens]

The reasonable solution to this problem would be for government to give power back to local authorities to initiate the construction of social and affordable housing on the scale which is presently required in London, thus eliminating these mixed developments which, by the logic of all concerned, don't address the issue of housing for the poor. But we all know this will never happen.

Aye, in a hypothetical utopia the Affordable Home Programme would have worked. That's 2016?

But- "London" councils (largely the same across the South East) don't have the infrastructure in place to initiate this sort of work anymore, they have been decimated intentionally so they're completely reliant on external development. Even internal maintenance contracts are out to tender to private firms these days, and you tend to find that they can afford to undercut the council's internal teams/departments. Plus if you're a trade local government money is fuck all generally. Same goes for directly employed council staff.

So you end up with quasi-private departments running majority of capital programmes with embedded PC/PDs in place even on small scales when individual projects aren't necessarily CDM notifiable etc

There are very few "capital" departments with the capability to deliver this sort of programme without large scale developers getting involved and where is the incentive for a private firm to do this with no external sales to maximise their profits.

Councils build council property is all pie in the sky stuff that would require top down organisation with billions of investment to put it in place. Ultimately in shit jobs its easier to use a big firms liability insurance and get them to enlist everyone on your behalf

 

[RWY]

@RWY not a pile on but you seem a bit all over the place with this?

I'm positing that social housing is something which should be, and needs to be, built again on a large scale (obviously I am aware of all the standard political and economic reasons usually given as to why this cannot be done), whilst disagreeing with the idea that segregated space within the private developments is something to be opposed on moral grounds - I realise it's not the standard left position but the two positions aren't exactly mutually contradictory.

 

[RWY]

Good article here from 2014 by Oliver Wainwright which puts the concept of poor doors into context: "Registered social housing providers always want separate entrances," says Robert Evans, a director of Argent, the developer currently building 2,000 homes in King's Cross, 40% of which will be classified as affordable. "They want to manage their own units, and feel they can get better maintenance and cleaning contracts with an economy of scale, when all the units are accessed off one core." Evans stresses the homes in King's Cross are all "tenure blind", meaning you shouldn't be able to tell the difference between private and affordable units, and have equal entrance arrangements. But he admits the problems come with incorporating mixed tenure homes in luxury schemes. "The difficulty is with the higher-end product in central London, which come with an astronomical service charge," he says. "Housing benefit won't cover that, and if you try to make the private buyers pay for it, that would last two seconds in a tribunal. It's illegal to make one group of residents cross-subsidise another."

 

[john eden]

@RWY well I’d say that there are two aspects to the segregation. One moral and one architectural.

The architectural aspect can mean greatly reduced amenities etc for social housing residents in the same block. There is obviously a trade off there. The very real example of a playground for private rental/leasehold residents (with none for social housing in the same development) is a good example of an unacceptable segregation.

The moral aspect about rich people maybe not wanting to mix with poor people is less convincing maybe. After all it is London, so good luck with that. But the moral argument is not bad ammunition to get social housing kids access to a playground. Or moving the bins that the poor people in Aldgate had to walk through to get to their poor door.

 

[john eden]

Maybe a post COVID exodus out of London will change things and there is potential for compulsory purchase of empty property/land fir some centrally planned schiz. Or mass squatting.

 

[john eden]

Also I’m not sure it is illegal for one group of residents to subsidise another. Leaseholders on council estates pay way more in service charges than people who rent, no?

 

[RWY]

'Yes' to the centrally planned schiz, and a defiant 'no' to the mass squatting.

 

[john eden]

'Yes' to the centrally planned schiz, and a defiant 'no' to the mass squatting.

Probably also not keen on abolishing private property then?

 

[RWY]

Probably also not keen on abolishing private property then?

I gather you missed the caricature of me which Craner posted in the Adam Curtis thread the other day.

 

[IdleRich]

The lashing out at the concept of poor doors is just another entirely predictable iteration of the politics of envy, rather than a considered attempt to devise genuinely radical solutions to the actual problem of the provision of housing.

Not piling on, it's just I do have an issue with this... even though I'll admit that we'll all been happy(ish) to allow the existence of different price seats at gigs, theatres, racetracks etc and never complained. I want to understand why I don't like this and I hope that there is more to it than just the fact that it's moving into a new sphere.

 

[IdleRich]

It's always an interesting thing about people paying to have better... but then feeling a need to celebrate or demonstrate that need by making sure that others don't get it. Like I went to see Onegin in London and there were a load of spaces in the best seats (we were in the cheapies) and some ushers came along and told us we could move to the empty good seats - but whatever you do, don't tell anyone who has paid cos they might get the arse.

 

[IdleRich]

To be clear I can understand why someone would feel their premium thing is devalued by someone else getting it for cheap (though personally I wouldn't).

 

[john eden]

I gather you missed the caricature of me which Craner posted in the Adam Curtis thread the other day.

I just saw that now. I’m not big on hammers and sickles myself. Indeed that seems far closer to the central planning you’re so keen on than my politics?

 

[RWY]

Indeed that seems far closer to the central planning you’re so keen on than my politics?

I'm suggesting we should maybe consider building a few more new towns along the lines of the Milton Keynes model to help alleviate the worst of London's housing problems rather than the violent overthrow of the entire system.

 

[john eden]

I'm suggesting we should maybe consider building a few more new towns along the lines of the Milton Keynes model to help alleviate the worst of London's housing problems rather than the violent overthrow of the entire system.

Well I guess we will see which of those happens first, if either.

Wouldn't a reallocation of the existing land and properties in London already be less resource intensive and better for the environment though, especially as we seem to be looking at a large proportion of them being empty post-covid?

Failing that, how will the money be found to pay for Milton Keynes mk 2?

 

[Mr. Tea]

I'm suggesting we should maybe consider building a few more new towns along the lines of the Milton Keynes model to help alleviate the worst of London's housing problems rather than the violent overthrow of the entire system.

Where would these new towns go, though? SE England isn't overflowing with land that's just sort of sitting around not doing much.