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We are making way for yuppies
• ST Pancras Housing (SPH), a registered charity and social landlord, is undertaking an elaborate refurbishment project involving five red-brick mansion blocks and costing £9 million – Dulverton and Dawlish in Gray’s Inn Road, and Braunton, Bideford and Barnstaple in Rosebery Avenue.
This scheme goes way beyond what is genuinely needed to meet the Decent Homes standard. Why, we wondered, is Sph forcing us all to move out for six months or more so as to transform these mansions?
Quite a number of the tenants are elderly, disabled and/or vulnerable, and this scheme is also clearly intended to ‘persuade’ as many of us longstanding tenants as possible to agree to move out permanently from these blocks – thus avoiding all the distress and upheaval of moving out then back again.
Sph is now saying it has very little to offer us locally for temporary or permanent accommodation, let alone similar to the mansion flats, and that many of us will have to move outside the area, or face court possession proceedings.
If these mansion blocks genuinely failed spectacularly the Decent Homes standard, Sph could have obtained appropriate funding from The Housing Corporation for the upgrading. So why is Sph funding this refurbishment by itself?
Well, families in need of affordable accommodation in Camden and Islington might be interested to know that after the refurbishment, vacant flats in these blocks will be let privately for optimum, market rents.
These blocks contain flats with large one, two and three-bedroomed flats, many rooms larger than in average social housing. But while there are loads of families desperate for more space, Sph will be handing these out to anyone who happens to afford the rent.
So, for example, a single yuppie will be able to rent a three-bedroomed flat.
I think I can speak for most of the existing tenants in saying that we find this scandalous. Any remaining trust and goodwill towards Sph is evaporating.
NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED
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