Grenfell ex-residents should get a 3-bed house with a garden if that's what they want

[pingodolcepo]

Daily mail outrage that some of the residents are asking for a 3-bed house with a garden. But honestly, they have been through a living hell that was caused by someone else's very bad choices.

There are plenty of people in London that have a 3 bed council house, why can't these people that have dealt with horrors get one also?

I know someone that got a council house in Highgate in the 80s, was a cabbie with a good wage, bought it when offered and sold it a few years ago for over a million and now lives in a fab place with loads of land and a pool in the south of France. If plenty of normal people got houses why can't these poor residents get one? They won't ever be able to afford to buy it due to the high cost of london houses now.

I think its still the case, sociologically that working class people tend to place more importance on family and kinship.
Walk around a working class area around christmas- you will see lights on in every home. Walk around a middle class area- not so much. They have other places to "go home" to.

@puzzleandpissedoff I’m really not sure, these properties that they have to offer them in the new developments were not homes that were ever on housing list to bid on for everybody else in the first place, usually on the normal housing list you would get 1 or 2 properties put up a week some weeks nothing on there, but I think these homes now have specially been ‘found’ and offered to people affected by grenfell only.
Don’t forget it isn’t just people who lived in the tower itself who survived that need housing, there’s people that lived in the surrounding blocks that need to also be housed. So your talking hundreds of people in need of permanent housing due to the grenfell tower incident.

I think its still the case, sociologically that working class people tend to place more importance on family and kinship.
Walk around a working class area around christmas- you will see lights on in every home. Walk around a middle class area- not so much. They have other places to "go home" to.

What utter rubbish.

Also WTF is "other places to go home to".

ChardonnaysPrettySister
Middle class life often takes a pattern of leaving home for another town in early adulthood (e.g: to university) and then looking for work nationally and therefore ending up in a different town to parents and extended family.

So middle class people might be driving across the country to visit relations at christmas.

I remember living in gentrifying east London and it was very pronounced. Walk around the estates on christmas eve- light on in every window. Walk around the new build "luxury flats"- whole building completely dark.

I also think if your on a low income- it can be increadably important to be around people you know and have connections with.
Knowing someone who will lend you a tenner can be the difference between managing or not.

In some contexts, not having those connections can even be considered a risk factor. I've had to navigate my child's nursery school teacher pointing out that I was "socially isolated."
And in fairness- I was! We'd moved into a new flat when I was pregnant and a few years down the line I was still just starting to build up a social network.

This was worthy of comment and possibly concern in a working class context. And yet it is a completely normal pattern of behaviour amongst middle class people. I'd say around a half of my NCT class moved house just before the birth of their first child. Some to out of the way villages where they knew noone!

I was responding to kittensinmydinner who suggested that there should be no "right" to a particular community where you have links.
I think it can be very easy for some people to say "Oh well you can always move" without really understadning what that might mean to someone in a different context.

I personally think that there very much should be a right to stability of community. And the history of social housing tells us that developments work better if stability and continuity is actively planned for and nurtured.

Yes, I think that has some truth to it juice. The geographic sticking together.

But isn't that simply the opportunity that comes with money ?
The Estate dwellers would have their families come over to them for Christmas. But those in the 'luxury flats ' are most likely to of moved to gain the ' well paid job' . And therefore have come from somewhere else.. which they would return to at Christmas.
The middle classes have always accepted that to find the best jobs they must be prepared to move. It's a normal part of middle class life.. dads got a promotion- I have to move to .... was a familiar narrative from my childhood. There was never any wailing about having the right to remain in their communities near their families.
Whereas those who were firmly routed to their homes had to accept the work they could find. At the money offered. They weren't in a position to bargain as they had to take anything going.

I find this entitlement particularly baffling especially from a migrant population who by their very nature have moved not only countries but often continents to find work. Why is it now impossible to move from Zone 1 to Zone 2 or 3 ?

Its a generalisation obviously. It doesn't apply to everyone all the time.

Thats exactly it Kittens. Its an behaviour thats adaptive to the circumstances of middle class life.
Its not necessarily the norm. And its not necessarily positive in other contexts.

Still utter rubbish.

So because we as family have a higher income I don't need the supper network of friends and neighbours I worked hard to establish?
Because middle class people buy their friends?

I have no right to a community because I'm not working class?

What an insulting thing to claim.

"So because we as family have a higher income I don't need the supper network of friends and neighbours I worked hard to establish?
Because middle class people buy their friends?
I have no right to a community because I'm not working class?"

What?! I said literally none of that.
For what its worth- I'm pleased you have friends. Good for you.

Yeah.

also think if your on a low income- it can be increadably important to be around people you know and have connections with.

I would have thought that's valid for everyone.

So because we as family have a higher income I don't need the supper network of friends and neighbours I worked hard to establish?

Your "supper network" isn't essential to your survival. It isn't that you don't have a right to it, but you're less reliant on it. It's a sociological observation rather than a value judgement.

yes it is, same as for everyone else.

Not sure what you mean by "supper network*, though.

I'm an immigrant myself and I don't have family here, a network of friends and a community is essential for me.

Chardonnay My next sentance was: "Knowing someone who will lend you a tenner can be the difference between managing or not."

Thats not true of everyone.

Thank you Battleax! Someone gets it!

Kittens, your posts make so much sense. I was a housing officer in authorities with far less pressure on housing stock than K&C or any London boroughs. There was only a small amount of subletting, but unless a neighbour tips off an officer it can go unnoticed if the rent is kept up to date.

Also, the Right to Buy means that 'council estates' as such no longer exist. Some estates have a higher percentage of owner occupiers and private landlords than council tenants. If a lot of residents are thought to be immigrants, then there can be a perception that they've been unfairly given a council tenancy.

Lastly, whilst a council will have a tenancy agreement for each property, they won't always know who is living there, either with the tenant (usually legally) or as a sub-tenant (illegally).

This is loosely connected to the topic - IMO it's time England followed Scotland's and Wales' examples, and withdraws the RTB. I also think the time required as a 'local connection' should have some link to demand, ie be much longer in all London boroughs than in a northern town where there is surplus social housing.

Towers like Grenfell were and still are highly desireable properties. I will bet if you got offered a Grenfell flat two years ago most people would consider that they had won the lottery. They get the chance to live in K&C for a relatively small amount of rent and the chance to buy and then sell for a fortunes. They can also live with their friends and family and sublet at a massive premium.

Flats are still desirable. Here in Manchester there are huge cranes swinging over all parts of the city erecting blocks of flats (mostly financed by Chinese investors), selling for inflated prices and being rented out for equally inflated prices. People are flocking to live in them and be enslaved to debt for life and what for ? They are subscribing to the manufactured cult of the "young professional".

Think Kirsy Alsopp bullshitting on the telly

Now then,back to basics. When Grensfell was built, there was nothing wrong with it. Just like similar blocks, there is nothing wrong with them.

If fire broke out in a flat, it would be contained and easily dealt with.

The problem is some fool clad them with combustible material and provided a ducted conduit for a fire in one flat to easily spread to all the other flats. Fire in flat breaks through upvc window,licks at the outer cladding,eventually breaches it,enters the annular space between original concrete structure and cladding, is fiercly funnelled by updraught of air,rips up the block and breaches other windows licking inside.

Sprinklers? total knee jerk answer. Wrong.

The answer is to clad such blocks in non combustible insulating material,,simples.

There seems to be a lot of shite talked and tweeted about Grenfell. Too many interest groups using the dead for their own ends.

I actually think that the 'middle' (for lack of a better term) classes have been pretty nicely fucked by the fast-moving pace of London development. My street of pretty Victorian terraces in West London has fallen prey to development at every possible turn (this is almost certainly because of corrupt estate agents), and it's now populated mostly by flats having high turnover.

I have some empathy for the fact that because I'm middle class I'm probably not going to need to call on my neighbour for a loan or childcare, but it's a shadow of my childhood where we had street parties and my parents were probably swinging with the neighbours (that's sort of a joke, but not really). I'd love to get the chance to know my street, but the demographics are not in my favour - I'm a middle aged lady and we have a surge of minor trustifarians and junior bankers moving in.

London is moving faster than most of us would like. We all have the option to leave.

If so much social housing in London is being sublet and so much being sold under RTB, then perhaps there aren't that much genuinely in need households as the statistics imply? If as Kitten estimates, 1/4 social homes are sublet and the tenant living elsewhere that is a huge amount of properties.

This is the problem with having a two tier system where some people are considered more deserving than others, those with unscrupulous intent will take advantage of the situation, that is human nature unfortunately. On the one hand you have social housing with subsidised cheaper rents sometimes including water rates, security of tenure, free maintenance/refurbishment by taxpayers and often in central/zone 2 London, RTB at a £100k discount. If you are a private renter you have very high market rates, no security of tenure (so you can be kicked out on the landlord's whim after 2 months), will get the minimum maintenance (what the landlord can be bothered with) if anything, no RTB discount if you want to buy a property etc.

The last thing K&C should be doing is an amnesty for illegal sublets (from Grenfell) and those that sublet, it will just encourage more of the same and could encourage people to start fires/or other dangerous activities in their buildings if they believe they will be given untold help and damages. It's also unfair to those waiting on the housing lists who haven't gone via unlawful routes to get a property.

I think that we need to remember that any decisions being made now are done so against the backdrop of possible criminal investigation(s)and civil litigation(s).

make that is exactly why K&C shouldn't make knee jerk decisions based on a heavy emotional atmosphere. Surely those subletting their flats to the poor victims are also guilty of a crime (such as overcrowding which can add to fire risks), not just K&C? They should not be able to get away with that responsibility.

mothertruck3r And anyone else who still doesn’t get it,

Water rates are charged on top of the rent & paid with the rent weekly

Maintenance & up keep is paid for by tenant via a weekly service charge

At Grenfell this money was taken and not spent on maintenance that is why there are two inquiries going on.
I don’t see what zones have to do with it , it’s part of the problem if people stopped obsessing about the financial value of their homes everyone would be a lot happier

I definitely think the sub letting tenants should be penalised and I agree that they may have allowed flats to become overcrowded. Perhaps they should pay back some of the rent as a fine?

I definitely think the sub letting tenants should be penalised and I agree that they may have allowed flats to become overcrowded. Perhaps they should pay back some of the rent as a fine?

It would be impossible to collect, and strictly an ideological exercise rather than a practical one.

Subletting is impossible to police, ergo, we shouldn't try.