camden-letters-home

Publications by New Journal Enterprises

Home

Archive

Competition

Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor
Published: 15 November 2007

Home sales bring misery

• THE council is claiming to have solved the problem of funding improvements to Camden’s homes and estates – all without requiring government to put in an extra penny.
The strategy is to sell valuable homes that people need, privatise estates and replace frontline estate managers and caretakers with call centres and contract cleaners.
This may be a sure way for the next in line from Camden to get an OBE for “services rendered” but it lets existing Camden tenants down and all those on the council housing waiting list. We can’t let it happen.
Every home sold means more human misery for those homeless or chronically overcrowded. If we let them start privatising estates they’ll work their way around the borough – apologising all the time. Tenants will lose our secure tenancies, lower council rents and a landlord we can hold to account.
Call centres mean more remote services – our predictions about centralising housing repairs have been proved true and the promised savings haven’t materialised either.
Centralising estate managers will mean that many tenants, particularly the most vulnerable, lose contact with a human being they know and trust. For the same reasons we need more resident caretakers who are part of their community and look after their tenants and estates – not less.
The continual process of replacing dedicated public sector workers with contractors is hollowing out our communities. The effect of cuts and privatisation hits you in the face when you try and use once proud and well-resourced services that either don’t exist or are a pale shape of their former self.
The council’s “fix” on bridging the funding gap in its housing finances will hit tenants hard – and it also won’t provide a long-term solution. The funding gap is a year-on-year problem that will continue until government accepts that there has to be a “level playing field” for council housing, an end to siphoning money from tenants’ rents and capital receipts and equal treatment on debt write-off and gap funding.
Our campaign is getting bigger – now is not the time for Camden Council to throw in the towel and let ministers off the hook.
Camden Defend Council Housing has produced a four-page newspaper to make the case. Unlike the council who are spending large sums (funded from tenants’ rents) on pamphlets, mailings, meetings and adverts we need donations and volunteers to put our case across.
This isn’t a spectator sport. Show that you support the campaign to get government to change policy and provide the “Fourth Option” to enable the council to improve our homes and estates and maintain them as first-class housing for years to come.
Help distribute the campaign newspaper to every tenant and put “Stand Up for Council Housing” posters up in your area. Ask everyone to sign the “Open Letter” to councillors and housing minister Yvette Cooper to show that we’re opposed to their plans and organise a meeting in your area.
ALAN WALTER
Chair, Camden
Defend Council Housing

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

Comment on this article.
(You must supply your full name and email address for your comment to be published)

Name:

Email:

Comment: