A house the community fought to save almost slips away

Published: 16 September, 2010
EDITOR'S COMMENT

THANK goodness One Housing Group housing association had the common sense, at the eleventh hour, to withdraw a house they had planned to put under the hammer.

If the auction had gone ahead a lovely Georgian property in Calthorpe Street, Holborn, would have been lost for public use.

That property and other Georgian houses in Calthorpe Street were threatened by demolition in the 1970s and only an intense campaign by Frank Dobson, now an MP, and ex-councillor Brian Woodrow, saved them.

After the council had bought them they were mistakenly sold  to a housing association.

And that’s where public accountability ended.

Who controls councils?  In the end, the electors. Who controls housing associations?  Effectively, no one.  They are a law unto themselves.

The decision by OHG to auction off the Calthorpe Street house exemplifies the argument of those who say associations as landlords of social housing cannot be compared to local authorities – one is accountable to the electors, the other isn’t.

If it hadn’t been for the anger of residents in Calthorpe Street, OHG would have sold their property.

In today’s recession housing associations, desperate for capital, are trying to raise it by selling their properties on the open market.

This is short termism at its worst.

The losers are families, often “key workers”, desperately looking for a home.  

Part of the  capital raised will be spent, say OHG, on bringing other properties up-to-date but part, no doubt, will be spent on keeping their general overheads in the black which would help to keep the staff in their jobs.

This is not the basis for a housing strategy.

• CAUGHT in a vice, ahead of unprecedented cuts in next month’s government financial allocation, Camden Council are looking for liquid funds to keep threatened services alive.

Hence, their latest policy to sell off every redundant council-owned property, mainly, presumably, commercial ones. This has been the policy of all adminis­trations for more than 20 years – the last desperate throw of the dice.

It seems as if there is an endless supply of such properties, ready to be sold off whenever a crisis engulfs the council. In fact, there isn’t. What will the council do when the supply dries up?