Camden New Journal - by RICHARD OSLEY Published: 04 October 2007
Labour delegate Anna-Helga Horrox
Gone in sixty minutes: four of your homes go under the hammer...
...but will selling up really solve housing crisis?
Housing chiefs collect £3.5 million at auction but tenants want council to keep homes
GOING. Going. Gone. Camden Council’s big housing sale got under way on Monday as four properties in desirable areas went under the hammer for more than £3.5 million.
As property wheeler dealers struggled to find seats at an auction in the glittering Dubarry suite, a chandelier-lit ballroom six floors up in Piccadilly’s exclusive Café Royal, there was no sign of anybody from the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition.
If they had been there, they would have seen six bidders scramble over a council-owned terrace home in Burrard Road, West Hampstead – probably bought by Camden in the 1970s to help the borough’s most needy. It went for £621,000.
Housing chiefs can also anticipate the arrival of a cheque for £543,000 for a shop and flat in Southampton Road, Gospel Oak, and another for £651,000 for a house in Prince of Wales Road, Kentish Town.
The biggest sale of the lunchtime auction was for a five-floor home in Primrose Gardens, Belsize Park, which fell into private hands for a fee of £1,770,000. In money terms, this was a brisk bit of businesses which boosted the Town Hall’s accounts by nearly 4 million – in little more than an hour of frantic bidding.
But the coalition is walking an increasingly dangerous tightrope.
It was made aware again this week that, by selling off homes in a time of such dire need, they run the risk of antagonising tenant activists who have fought for Camden’s Council homes and the thousands of homeless families desperate for a roof over their heads
The receipts – a drop in the £300 million ocean needed to repair all of Camden’s estates up to national standards – will prove little consolation for those at the back of the 15,000 strong waiting list for a council home.
Even more annoying for opponent is the timing.
It came just days after the climax of the Labour party conference in Bournemouth where senior figures were, by all accounts, trying to thrash out a deal with ministers that would see the government invest in Camden’s homes.
Funding for repairs has been effectively frozen for three years on the grounds that tenants do not want to follow policy of stock transfer and instead want to keep the democratically-elected council as their landlord.
Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson said: “I don’t want to raise anybody’s hopes up but I get the impression there will be movement. But what the council is doing selling off and selling out. What they are saying to the homeless is that you are going to have to pay for the private buyers to do their homes up. It is disgraceful. They are not putting up a fight”
If the government release the cash it would pave the way for a host of desperately-needed repairs on the borough’s estates, and the justification to sell off the properties would evaporate.
But, for the moment at least, the coalition’s plan to advertise even more homes on the private market and deal directly with housing associations.
While tenants are mobilising again against the sell-off, the stance from the Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition is that whatever the hints and suggestions from the Labour party, there has been no concrete pledge of help.
Delegates from Camden were in the thick
of the debate in Bournemouth with Anna-Helga Horrox from the St Pancras branch taking the stage of the main conference floor on Thursday to plead Camden’s case.
In a stirring speech, Ms Horrox held up a copy of the New Journal – the only paper to have covered the housing debate affecting Camden in any genuine detail over the last five years.
She said: “My borough of Camden was rated an excellent council after 35 years of Labour control. That’s why tenants voted to keep the council as their landlord.
The council was starved of access to housing maintenance money. In the local elections last May, we lost control to a Tory – Lib Dem coalition. Our housing situation wasn’t the only reason for this, but it was certainly one of them.
The Tories and Lib Dems have since been able to use Labour Party policy as a political stick to beat us with locally. And as the Camden New Journal reported, they’re using it as an excuse to sell off homes in the borough, homes which will be forever lost to future generations of council tenants.”
Confidence was high among delegates that the long-running deadlock could soon be brought to a close with Yvette Cooper reportedly trying to work out a way to invest in Camden without damaging national policy.
The most confident of delegates believe a compromise agreement could be announced within the next month.
Ms Cooper said in her own conference speech: “We are giving councils more flexibility. We are working with councils across the country to help all of them deliver decent homes.”
Alan Walter, a tenants leader from Kentish Town who is a chief organiser for pressure group Defend Council Housing, said: “We’re alive and kicking and we’re determined to win improvements to our homes and estates. “Four years running delegates at Labour Party conference have banged the table and demanded direct investment in council housing.”
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