Demolishing housing estates

Dave isn't going to carry this out, it's just PR blurb for the May elections , more hot air

Elegran, would you explain - if social housing is demolished and fewer houses being built to replace them - not forgetting there is already very long waiting lists for social housing - how will this benefit councils ? I accept it will benefit buy to rent landlords but this means more people will need help with paying the rent because rents are so high and the government refuses to cap rents of these private lets

So he publishes a headline-grabbing article in his name in a national newspaper (presumably penned by a minion) and then says it's not been thought through. Surely not!
Mind you this is the politician who shocked his party by blurting out last spring that he is going to resign before the next election. Which means that there are now a lot of his senior colleagues jostling for position in their bid to succeed him.

www.theguardian.com/money/2015/nov/13/rogue-landlords-exploiting-deepening-housing-crisis

Except that she omitted to remember that it was the Labour party who initiated the plan and the tories stopped it.
So her post was not spot on at all.
If it does not matter who initiated it, why was it a good idea for the tories to stop it?
You make a nonsense of your statement.

Elegran your post 20:33 spot on.

Cameron himself said that his idea had not been thought through.

Elegran!

Now the Tories have got a majority they have got the bit between the teeth and are intent on destroying many aspects of British life. NHS, BBC and social housing.
He talks about a paltry £14 million for "regeneration" which would just about cover the bills for bulldozing.

I am sure they could build round any house which has been bought. Unpleasant for the occupier, but I daresay some would say it serves them right for getting above themselves and becoming a "middleclass" houseowner.

Would they object because he is pinching their ideas? That would be cutting off the nose to spite the face. If the housing is old and needs replacing for the good of the tenants, surely it doesn't matter who initiates the replacing. Funding it by selling off SOME of the houses would mean less expense to the council. It would also mean a mix of occupancy, which ought to stop it becoming a sink estate.

SOME not MOST.

speye.wordpress.com/2016/01/13/tories-demolish-homes-owned-in-cameron-plan/

If someone who has bought his house through right to buy does not want it knocked down in Cameron's new plan, he can stop the redevelopment of the whole scheme.
Councils will have to agree to it, too. Why should a socialist council which has had its previous schemes scrapped five years ago agree to what Cameron wants to do now?

I wonder how many of these housing estates he wants to be demolished are in London?

www.google.com/url?q=http://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2015/10/08/ignore-cameron-s-rhetoric-the-tories-are-the-party-of-fallin&sa=U&ved=0ahUKEwin7YaNiKrKAhVEliwKHaNzANMQFggFMAA&client=internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNHYTu8MsWQS8vcR5BbzzPo6XwzHvw

Less than 50% of Londoners own their homes. The deposit has gone up to £100,000 so even fewer people will be able to.

What I don't understand is how you can build enough homes to house the tenants from the high rise blocks, on the same amount of land.

(I think the 'sink estates' would be the high rise ones, wouldn't they?) How is it going to work?

Isn't that exactly what they do at the moment? With new developments. Seems to work ok.

...will fund the regeneration of the rest of the estate.

Sounds to me as though the estates are going to comprise a mixture of private homes and social housing. The clue is in the words 'the rest of the estate'.

rosesarered:
He does want the land, this is the last paragraph of his speech:
"So regeneration will work best in areas where land values are high, because new private homes, built attractively and at a higher density, will fund the regeneration of the rest of the estate.
Now how do you read that? Councils will have to sell the land to private cocerns, who will build houses for sale, and councils will have to use the money to build new estates. Where? Next door to the nice private estate? Builders will find some way to avoid that, by promising to build a few "affordable houses" on the new estate. Council tenants will not be able to afford them, and the number will be small. The new council estate built by the council will be far away from schools attended by tenants' kids, and far away from workplaces. But Cameron doesn't much care, as he knows council tenants do not work and do not send their kids to school!

That's terrible Gillybob your poor parents.

gillybob that must have been an awful time for your poor parents, glad they were able to finally move away.

Yes, but you need to have a final point where if a family is destroying a neighbourhood that has to be the final act. Yes, they are homeless but will be provided with temporary accommodation and it is possible having lost their home they can be helped to think things through.

Why should roads and neighbourhoods have to undergo the misery of families whose children threaten neighbours, damage their property and leave them living in fear, because a council will not in extremis remove them from their house. What solution do you propose?

There will be very few familes where this is necessary. DD lives in an ex council house, the neighbouring property is still one. When the elderly lady who lived there when she moved in decided to move to a small bungalow she was replaced by a single mother, two children and a partner who wandered in and out. Initially the new tenant was a dreadful neighbour, rubbish piled up in the front garden, overgrown back garden, lots of noise and shouting. When her neighbours complained, the Housing Association were quick to act. They helped clear the gardens, presumably read the riot act or offered help and now bins are used and put out regularly, the back garden is not allowed to get too wild and the noise level has diminished. In most cases that is what will happen. Eviction is a last resort.

"if all else fails, evicted" and what happens to a family who have been evicted? They become homeless . . . .

Any residential area will have problem families and problem households. Watch Neighbours from Hell and other such tv programmes. If there are problem families then it is up to the local authority to deal with them. Families can be given clean up orders, anti noise orders, ASBOS and at the end of the line, if all else fails, evicted

My parents lived next door to one such problem families. They suffered miserably for many years. The family were given final warnings, final final warnings, final final final warnings etc. Every member of the family had (and probably still has) an ASBOS. They were threatened with eviction more times than I can remember. It never happened though. Eventually after years of suffering my parents moved house. We later learned (from the police) that 2 members of the family were being protected as they had given evidence against someone to save their own skin (in other words they were equally as guilty). The local authority were powerless to deal with them. My poor parents almost had nervous breakdowns.

Dysfunctional doesn't even begin to cover it.

Janeainsworth only some of the houses were boarded up, their were groups of youngsters hanging around and many houses were quite obviously occupied.

roses are red, I feel you are selectively reading the posts on this thread. No-one is saying do nothing, we are saying do not do this, it will not work. It has not worked in the past. If you follow the two links I posted in my previous post you will come on reports making constructive suggestions and offering examples of estates that have seen considerable improved, not through demolition and rebuilding, but by working with local people. These articles point up better, quicker and cheaper ways of improving sink estates which are proven to work.

Any residential area will have problem families and problem households. Watch Neighbours from Hell and other such tv programmes. If there are problem families then it is up to the local authority to deal with them. Families can be given clean up orders, anti noise orders, ASBOS and at the end of the line, if all else fails, evicted.

David Cameron has already announced, and funded, a programme aimed at working intensively with dysfunctional families, surely this also has a part to play.

I don't think you can do anything about those people Elegran. It happens in other roads as well as housing estates. The council just has to eventually go in and clear up, and bill the tenants. Whether they ever pay up is another matter. I think it's something that has to be accepted. I don't think it would bring the rest of the estate down.

I think the idea is a good one. Give people somewhere a bit pleasant to live.

What to do with the bad tenants is a big problem. I don't mean people who are physically unable to keep a garden in order or have hit a bad patch and are too depressed to care, I mean those few who really don't care about their surroundings or their neighbours and just want to eat, drink, fight, break up the furniture and throw their rubbish into the front garden.

If they are evicted, their children will suffer, and the family will be added to the long list of homeless. If they are moved to a down-graded area where there are others like them, to stew in their own juice, that makes a ghetto. If you could fine them for damaging the house and leaving the place ina state that encourages vermin (and for generally being a damn nuisance to everyone else) they would claim that they can't pay. Sending round someone to teach them how to keep the place reasonable and consider their neighbours is not likely to work.