Social Housing, Not Social Cleansing

Campaigners of all ages at the South Kilburn Estate  Photo: Sujata Aurora

Last Saturday afternoon I joined other members of Brent Housing Action on a ‘Housing Inequality Bus Tour’ highlighting the harsh human consequences of London’s deepening housing crisis. A double-decker bus hired by the union UNITE set off from Bishops’ Avenue near Highgate (also known as ‘billionaire’s row’) and made stops at key sites where regeneration schemes are contributing to housing injustice, including the Jubilee Sports centre near Queen’s Park and the South Kilburn Estate in Brent.

The nature and dynamics of this housing crisis are of course complicated, involving the drastic decline in the supply of social housing and its replacement by private rented accommodation during the Thatcher years; New Labour’s promotion of London as a property honey pot for the global super-rich; and now the ConDem government’s use of welfare reform to socially cleanse large chunks of the capital - including Brent, as a recent BBC Panorama programme illustrated.

The community mobilises to save the Jubilee Sports Centre Photo: Pilgrim Tucker

The really insidious aspect of this process, however, is that, whilst the drivers of the housing crisis may be global, their implementation is very local. Not a week goes by in our city without another neighbourhood asset and community space being picked out for lucrative ‘redevelopment’ – almost universally with the assistance and complicity of local authorities. In Willesden Green, the Library re-development is the most blatant example of putting profits before people. In neighbouring wards, the ongoing saga over the former Kensal Rise Library and the recent cross-Borough decision to demolish the Moberly and Jubilee Sports centres in order to build 155 housing units, only 12 of which will be ‘affordable’ represent further instances. Even the much-trumpeted South Kilburn ‘regeneration’ is in fact  ‘decanting’ many existing residents out-of-Borough to make way for one-bedroom flats with price-tags starting at £284, 950. Anyone chasing an ‘affordable’ home should expect to cough up 80% of that market price. 

The Willesden Library Gated Development for Sale in Singapore

Local campaigning groups like Brent Housing Action have sprung up across London and the rest of the country in an effort underline the connections between Council-led ‘redevelopment’ and social cleansing, and to join-up the dots between seemingly parochial regeneration schemes which are rapidly changing the social mix of the whole of London. 

One of Make Willesden Green’s slogans is that our campaign is local but not parochial. That’s why our focus on the scandalous Willesden Green Library centre re-development is not simply about unwanted changes in our own backyard – it is also fundamentally about promoting a different housing model that allows Local Authorities to build more social housing, apply rent controls to the private sector and reverse the promotion of ‘buy-to-leave’ properties.

That Was The Week That Woes

Signposting  the Willesden Week of Action

Residents and visitors to Willesden Green were welcomed to our neighbourhood last week with a massive sign that made our area look like the South Bronx in the 1970s. Were they doing a chilly remake of the Summer of Sam? Or perhaps Crimewatch was filming in the area? The reality was less glamorous but just as scary: this was Brent Council’s idea of engaging the community during the ‘Willesden Week of Action’. And as this collection of Tweets indicates, people were unimpressed with the stunt.

Visiting the actual Week of Action stalls outside Sainsbury’s, anger over the threatening sign changed to a sense of disappointment: a potentially fruitful initiative was being squandered by Council incompetence. The fire-fighters, NHS employees, Council Housing workers and Transition Town people who were at the Week of Action Tent (though oddly the Willesden Green Town Team seem not to have been invited) are at the core of our community, and it is very important that we have an opportunity to meet  and exchange information face-to-face. Yet the whole event was overshadowed by the bizarre signage outside the tube station and the more sinister anti-immigration raids that seem to have been part of the Week of Action.

The Willesden Week of Woe was not just a PR disaster for Brent Council. It shows how one hand just doesn’t know what the other is doing. While the stalls at the Week of Action rightly tell us how important it is for health and well-being to get out and about, to stop-and-chat to neighbours (immigrant or otherwise), our Council decimates our area’s remaining public spaces, evicts our independent bookshop and threatens to close down our community pub. As Council workers look to advise vulnerable residents about their housing rights, their bosses see it fit to build gated communities on public land, marketed at wealthy speculators.

The Week of Action Tent on Saturday

We set up our own Make Willesden Green stall outside Sainsbury’s on Saturday to offer this alternative message: we want Brent Council to start joining-up its thinking with its actions. If Councillors and their officers really want to focus on our area’s needs and priorities, then ditch the scaremongering and start defending our community assets and fighting school academisation; build more social housing and protect tenants' rights; preserve our public spaces and stop private developers swallowing our neighbourhood up.