Download full factsheet: OurTottenhamHousingFactsheetDemolitions

There is compelling evidence that estate or tower block refurbishment, in all but the most extreme cases, is both cheaper and less damaging to the local environment than demolition and new build. (Anne Power, 2008, “Does demolition or refurbishment of old and inefficient homes help to increase our environmental, social and economic viability?”). Anne Power identifies a list of issues and assumptions that are not addressed in arguments in favour of demolition.

• Demolition breaks up the essential social infrastructure and social capital in neighbourhoods, which take decades to build up again. Facilities and meeting places are costly to reinstate once they have been lost, and young people can become very disorientated as demolition is planned and carried out. Government research about social capital identifies a strong relationship between local social networks and individual well-being and resilience. There is a need for research that looks at the social and financial costs of breaking up local social networks, in particular the impact on young families, children and the elderly.

• Demolition plans have knock-on effects on schools, shops, health provision, banks and other local services, most of which leave an area before it is demolished and do not return till long after rebuilding, if at all. This causes hardship to the residents and, if they are elderly, can have very negative health impacts

• Rebuilding timescales are slowed by the need to renew infrastructure after demolition. The whole process can take up to 20 years. All in all, it is rare for a demolition plan to deliver replacement housing in less than 10 years, even with strong government backing and funding, as the Housing Market Renewal area demolitions are showing. It often takes far longer.

• Embodied carbon [the original construction materials] in homes that are being destroyed and in replacement homes is not ‘counted’ in proposals in favour of demolition.

• Demolition and renovation waste make up about one-third of all landfill.

• The infrastructure required for new building and its significant energy costs and emissions impact are not discussed.

All these factors make demolition costly, disruptive, damaging to wider areas and therefore unpopular. The local environmental impacts of demolition are obvious: unsightly boarding up, accumulated rubbish, increased dumping, overgrown gardens, decayed streets and reduced maintenance. The wider environmental impacts of demolition are even more serious: loss of valuable and increasingly scarce materials; impact on landfill sites; transport of materials to and from demolition sites; particulate pollution in the process of demolition and transportation of rubble; and loss of housing, creating the need for new housing with its high embodied energy. Only the most extreme physical conditions justify such high social, economic and environmental costs.

Here are 3 specific examples with the costs of the refurbishment provided:

THE ABOVE IS AN EXTRACT FROM THE CARPENTERS ESTATE COMMUNITY PLAN

 

 

The social cleansing of housing estates in London

 

By Loretta Lees – Just Space, The London Tenants’ Federation and Southwark Notes Archives Group

We are clear that the regeneration of council estates in London is nothing more than a state-led gentrification strategy disguised by a liberal policy rhetoric of mixed communities. Together as academics and activists [1] we have researched four London council estates, all at different stages of renewal: the Heygate Estate (finally empty as the last of the leaseholders, who were asserting their right to proper compensation through a public inquiry around their CPOs, was forcibly evicted by high court bailiffs at the instruction of Southwark Council’), [2] the Aylesbury Estate (part of which has been redeveloped, the rest of which is being decanted or is still in limbo), the Pepys Estate (where a council tower block, Aragon Tower, was redeveloped by Berkeley Homes into the Z Apartments), [3] and the Carpenters Estate (whose residents vigorously and effectively opposed the London Borough of Newham and UCLs plans for a UCL-led development, and whom we have been helping to develop an alternative neighbourhood plan). [4]

Mixed Communities Policy was launched by the previous New Labour government to tackle social exclusion in deprived areas such as council estates. New Labour believed that they could reduce social exclusion and promote social mobility for the poor by mixing them with the middle classes the idea being that the social and economic capital of the middle classes would trickle down to the poor through social mixing. The goal of this revanchist form of social engineering was a new moral order of respectable and well-behaved (middle class) residents. Despite a change of government and no new national discussion on mixed communities policy, local councils in London still cling to it as the selling point for their regeneration schemes (as seen in the current Earls Court regeneration plan).

But there is significant evidence of the poor performance of ‘mixed communities’ policy with respect to its claims to aid the social and economic mobility of the poor. Geographers have called it a faith-based displacement activity. The evidence to date [5] indicates that mixed communities policy improves the life circumstances of neither those poorer residents who are able to remain in the neighbourhood, nor of those who are moved out. Indeed, there seems to be quite persuasive evidence [6] that specialised neighbourhoods have labour market advantages, even for the poor; indeed particularly for the less skilled who rely on personal contacts to a greater extent to find jobs.

The term the new urban renewal has been used [7] to describe the American HOPE VI programme of poverty deconcentration, in which public housing projects in US inner cities have been demolished (much as London council estates are being demolished in the name of mixed communities policy) to make way for mixed income housing in ways very similar to post-war urban renewal programmes in the US. Despite a new emphasis in 21st century London on partnership working, community involvement, and sustainability, the results are the same: the destruction of local communities and the large-scale displacement of low-income communities (see the SNAG maps showing the displacement of council tenants and leaseholders from the Heygate Estate).

The process for all four regeneration schemes we have looked at has been very similar:

First, local authorities made out that the estates were failing in some way, socially or economically; they were sink estates, they were structurally unsound, etc. These were often misrepresentations and falsehoods.

Second, the local authorities systematically closed down options and subsequently created a false choice for the estates residents between living on estates that needed upgrading and repair (which they were very unlikely to get) or newly built neighbourhoods in which they were unlikely to be able to afford the rents let alone get a mortgage, and even if they did they would not be living with their existing community.

 

 

Third, residents support for these regeneration programmes was more often than not misrepresented or misused.

Fourth, the delays and uneven information flows meant that residents often struggled to fight –  many lived and still live in limbo, unsure about the future of their estate, many suffered and continue to suffer from depression and exhaustion.

Fifth, the affordable housing supposedly being made available to the ex-council tenants is a con – much of the housing deemed affordable by the government is out of the reach of households earning below the median level of income in London (around £30,000 p.a. in 2012)! [8]

The fact is that a variety of unjust practices have been, and are being, enacted on these council estates.

In this project we have been gathering the data (evidence of resident and business displacement and unjust practices) and the tools (examples of alternatives) necessary to try to halt further demolitions and social cleansings, and to develop community-led alternatives for sustaining existing communities on council estates in London. We are in the process of producing an anti-gentrification toolkit that will provide tenants, leaseholders and housing activists across London with the information that they need to recognise council estate destruction as a form of gentrification, and also with suggestions for practical ways to fight it.

If we truly want London to be a socially mixed city we must stop the social cleansing of its council estates now! It is already getting too late!

 

References

 

1     This research is funded by a 2012 Antipode Activist Scholar Award,PI: Loretta Lees, CoIs: London Tenants Federation, Richard Lee/Just Space and Mara Ferreri/SNAG, Challenging the New Urban
Renewal: gathering the tools necessary to halt the social cleansing of council estates and developing community-led alternatives for sustaining existing communities.
2     35 Percent: Campaigning for a More Affordable Elephant. Heygate Leaseholders Forced to Leave Their Homes,  http://35percent.org/blog/2013/07/20/heygate-leaseholders-forced-to-sell-their-homes-cpo-approved
3     See Davidson and Lees (2010)
4     CARP and the UCL students campaign did influence UCLs decision to back out, but there were also economic factors regarding the price of the land, etc, and more generally the failure to reach a commercial agreement (read the interview with the former UCL Provost Malcolm Grant in http://cheesegratermagazine.org/investigations/2013/5/13/interview-with-the-provost.html  ).
5     See Bridge, Butler and Lees (2012); and specifically on London, Arbaci and Rae (2013).
6     See Cheshire (2009).
7     See Hyra (2008).
8     See http://www.londontenants.org/publications/other/theafordablehousingconf.pdf