The Big Issue in the North kicked off a series of regeneration stories from me today with this piece about Alicia Rose, a very unhappy homeowner in phase three of Liverpool’s Edge Hill/Wavertree renewal scheme. Weekly from next Monday there will be three larger features on aspects of the Housing Market Renewal scheme – looking at the Welsh Streets in Liverpool, at West Hull and also featuring an interview with consultant and academic Brendan Nevin, architect of the programme. A number of other stories will hopefully follow, looking at some of the other communities I’ve visited lately, and those which aren’t being published in that sense will appear on my blog. After a long lull, HMR has been in the national comments pages over recent weeks, with Matthew Engel at the Financial Times and Charles Clover, formerly of the Telegraph but now at the Sunday Times, also taking another look at the scheme. Nevertheless I’m finding it impossible as ever to get any national commissioning editors interested in anything that I’ve put forward.
To read the Big Issue story, click on the image above….click on the links down the right hand side of this blog to hear out other stories from my home/castle project and check back for more…I’ll be putting one or more onto my blog each week.
There is a ring of housing around the city centre which is being flattened, often to be replaced with ‘luxury apartments’ for the wealthy – handy for the £1 billion new shopping complex on Liverpool One!
hmmm. not sure it’s quite that simple but I know what you’re driving at. Liverpool’s housing markets are a bit more complex than that and although much of the replacement housing is out of the reach of the lower-income residents who are often losing their homes, it’s hardly for the super-wealthy. I can’t see the Liverpool FC squad buying houses in the Granby Triangle any time soon!
I know what you mean though – I think the issue here is affordability and the fact that many people are not being given what they consider a fair price for their properties. It’s difficult stuff.
There are several reasons for the clearance – to break down communities and also for developers to make a financial killing redeveloping areas.
I’m sorry but I still don’t think the motivations are quite that black and white. And I say that as someone who has close contacts with and is a big supporter of many of these community campaigns. I’m cynical about the outcome of these programmes but I don’t think everyone involved is a crook or wants to destroy communities. I honestly feel it’s more nuanced than that…wrong-headed in many cases, blundering and heavy handeded certainly but not as simplistic as some would have it. Sorry – I felt the same as you four years ago when I started looking deeply at this issue but the closer I look the more complex it gets.
I’ve spent 15 years researching the breakdown of families and communities – it is most likely one of the reasons for the destruction of perfectly good housing along with the moneymaking aspects.
I think you’re onto something there. your argument before was a touch too simplistic for me. I agree that community breakdown is the first problem, along with local authority neglect. An area declines first and then there is an opening for well-meaning (but sometimes misguided) officials and regeneration people, and the more profit-driven developers. Without the underlying problems in these neighbourhoods (family breakdown, antisocial behaviour, drugs, unemployment, absentee landlords etc) these forces wouldn’t get a look in..
Karl Marx stated that “you destroy the family, you destroy society” – which means you can rebuild it to suit the agenda of the ruling class.
The nuclear family is being destroyed by both labour and tory parties. There are several campaign groups of mothers, fathers and grandparents all torn from their children via secret family courts.
Mothers are having their children stolen from them via social services for forced adoption, yet the mothers have done nothing wrong in most cases. Similarly with fathers.
Many labour party members are or were Marxist in their younger days.
Destroying communities breaks up the community spirit ie. the community family. I lived on an overspill area in Runcorn and witnessed the deterioration of the community when uprooted people were brought in.
The councils / housing associations use dirty tactics to remove residents ( can’t remember who told me that ) – which is quite likely as it seemed to empty the ‘Ten Streets’ in Birkenhead. http://www.wirralnews.co.uk/wirral-news/local-wirral-news/2005/06/22/ten-streets-the-yobs-destroyed-80491-15653671/
If you wish to cover ‘Forced Adoption’, I can put you in touch with mothers who have had their children snatched by social services. One family recently tried to escape to Spain.