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Housing under threat
• COUNCILLOR Chris Naylor who is in charge of housing, thinks the five per cent increase in council tenant rents is being insisted upon by the national government (No choice but to raise the rent, February 8).
Our MP Frank Dobson thinks it is not. One of these honourable gentlemen is mistaken. Councillor Naylor, please provide the exact quote from the government and name your source.
KIM MORRISSEY
Chenies Street, WC1
• AT a recent Town Hall meeting the “streamlining”of Camden’s flagship District Management Committees (DMCs) was discussed. We were promised “evidence” to back up any need for “streamlining” the DMCs, but what there was on the papers and on the overhead screen seemed negligible.
Indeed there was even a snide remark, which was disgraceful, when one of the officers seem to be implying on behalf of the Lib Dem-Tory alliance, that we should explore how to include disabled and minority ethnic groups in tenants and residents’ associations (TRAs), as if they are not already fully involved. For anyone to insinuate that there is rampant disability and race discrimination in Camden TRAs is completely absurd. Constitutionally absolutely everyone on an estate can turn up to vote in our TRA elections and they are always welcome to get involved in the democratic process which puts forward representatives to the DMCs.
Two possibilities are suggested for this unjustified ‘streamlining’ of the DMCs. One stated is that the housing service must now be run on the ‘cheap’. Yes, ‘cheap’ was the word actually used! So out goes the democratic process fought for over years by our council tenants as their right to participate in decision making.
Secondly, the papers for consultation give just a three way choice: do nothing; “build on existing structures”; or the obviously preferred Lib Dem option of “starting again, linking in with the development work happening on the new administration’s Area Forum policy”. What this waffle means is anyone’s guess.
But the prospect for the borough if we streamline or neuter or wind up the DMCs will be appalling. Now more than ever we need the representative voice of tenants and residents to speak out. And they need right now to defend the democratic process itself, rather than allow officer-led ‘informal ways to get involved’ dominate our Housing policies.
Cllr JULIAN FULBROOK
(Lab) Town Hall
Judd Street, WC1
• THE Lib Dem/Tory council have already indicated that social housing will soon disappear through stock transfer and sale of properties to housing associations and to private enterprise. Already they have agreed to sell the freehold to council properties bought through Right to Buy to 50 leaseholders so that Camden Council totally loses any freehold rights for ever to the land on which these properties are situated and it would not be impossible for them to sell the elderly people’s centres like Ingestre Road to private developers for luxury housing.
Housing is a social service.
I have emailed Cllr Chris Naylor at least twice over the past four months to ask him for a guarantee that there will be a sum included in the council budget for the next financial year from April 1, 2007 for refurbishment and for community safety improvements for the College Place estate in my ward in Camden Street where, without any security around, drug dealers and other nefarious intruders wander without any control. He won’t reply because he won’t spend any money on estates due to that promised nought per cent increase in council tax.
If social housing goes in Camden it would take at least 30 years to get back to the situation where there would be housing stock for the homeless and families and it would be back to private landlordism.
Come on, Cllr Chris Naylor, as our Executive for Housing can we have some promises that the present Lib Dem Tory coalition running Camden will not destroy council social housing. We deserve to know.
CLLR ROGER ROBINSON
(Lab) Town Hall
Judd Street, WC1
• DURING last year’s local elections Chris Naylor knocked our door whilst canvassing for the Lib Dems. We, as life-long socialists agreed to vote for him since we thought the Lib Dems couldn’t be worse that the New Labour.
He was elected and is now in charge of housing. We had a problem four weeks ago and duly rang the Town Hall Members Room only to be told he did not have a contact number. A message was taken by someone who would pass our phone number on to him.
We didn’t hear for a week and rang again only to go through a repeat performance. We still have had no response. We have since called again and left only one message: “Chris, don’t bother to get in touch, you will not get our vote again.”
CAT TAYLOR
Hartland Road, NW6
•I LIVE on a run-down estate in Somers Town. I’m a disabled lone-parent living on an extremely low and inadequate income, as things stand now. To even suggest an increase let alone present it as inevitable is unjustifiable, but to further expect us to find extra money for so called ‘service charges’ is adding insult to injury.
We have massive council tax bills in Camden which already pay for caretakers and contract gardeners etc. Surely what he’s really saying is that we must now foot the bill for the bad choices already made, in a history of mismanagement, misuse of funds and missed opportunities by the last council and now set to be slavishly followed by this one.
S GRANT
Bridgeway Street, NW1
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