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Culross Building |
Housing is not a commodity to be traded for excess profit
The loss of Culross Building is just one example of how successive governments have failed to protect the right to affordable homes, writes Skip Murphy
LOOKING into the station from my lovely room in Culross Building behind King’s Cross... I really love that place, still mad with Victorian grandeur. For years now it has lived with the threat of demolition but it doesn’t want to go. People believe it will last forever.”
Thus wrote Andrew O’Hagan in A London View and quoted in London At Dawn by Anthony Epes in his photo journal.
The quote shows how loved the building was to many who knew it – but, alas, it is now being destroyed till not a brick remains.
Just how were the planners convinced its destruction would not matter? Built in 1891, it housed that essential layer of society, the working class.
Till the 1960s the air was contaminated by steam engine and gas holder emissions. Its fortress-like facade along cobbled Battlebridge Road featured in many film sets. It was hoped it would be modernised and adapted for modern living – “affordable” housing much in demand.
At the corner of Bayham Street and Camden Road, where two street houses have recently been sold by the council, I met a former neighbour from Hampstead.
The tale she told would have been familiar to Charles Dickens, who lived in Bayham Street, the site marked by a plaque.
Content for 20 years to make a home in a tiny attic room, suddenly she was told to quit – the note handed over by a handyman. Subsequently she has found the man to be intimidating, enquiring many times when she would go. And go she must, for this lady of mature years is not protected by tenancy laws as the landlady lives in the 11-room premises. Unable to afford market rent, my friend will apply for public housing – and, with 10,000 on the council’s list, what hope of that has she?
The theme of this piece is housing, from the lost building of 1891 to the present pressures on publicly owned properties.
In its 11-year reign in government, the Labour party has not extended security of tenure to those whose landlord lives on the premises (we are talking not of the occasional lodger but of business ongoing for years).
Notoriously, the withholding of funds for estates’ refurbishment has led the present council to sell off street properties, to the great delight of developers.
Camden tenants rightly want municipal stock kept under council control, with councillors answerable to the occupants.
Many “private” tenants live in fear of arbitrary decisions by property owners.
Anyone reading the advertisements in the local press will note the great difference between public and private rents. By subsiding public rents the government in effect subsidises most companies who employ low-wage staff.
When the public sector again builds houses, the right-to-buy schemes must not apply to the new stock.
For those who can afford the prices, the commercial market offers housing galore. Councils could lease land to allow mixed housing provided the local demand for subsidised accommodation is met. And there should be no more large estates – these lead to an overload of children in a confined area. Clare Short advocates the creation of a Social-Democratic government – to which a sprinkling of socialism should be added.
Housing is an essential social need and not a commodity to be traded for excess profit. Lack of it leads to a collapse of society and to anarchy.
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