At my gran’s house when I was a kid, getting to know the neighbours was something that mainly happened on the village green. We’d all gather there on Fridays, waiting for the fish-and-chip van, on Morris Dancing days, and for all sorts of other reasons so it’s strange that I’ve lived where I am for years now, and today was the first time I met up with neighbours on what is my local equivalent of the village green.
We should use them more! Today was a gathering to discuss housing issues in Hastings and my goodness there are plenty of those!
The most burning issue in my mind about my immediate area is what gets built by whom, and why. Our ward is mostly on a quite steep hillside above the railway, with the main street below us in the valley. Until recently, there was a long stretch of mostly green land running along the hillside directly above the railway but developers are constantly trying to build on it, which worries me because it’s the last ditch (literally!) soak-away for run-off rainwater and the valley already has flooding issues. What worries the council most is that the developers always seem to have reasons why they can’t include ‘affordable’ housing – affordable! – never mind social housing, which is what we really need but, even as they build more anti-social, unaffordable flats, and take up soak-away land, a perfectly good block that was until recently social housing is being pulled down.
Going up
Coming down
That was one of a mass of issues people brought along. Among the groups present to discuss it all were Acorn Hastings, a community union fighting bad landlords and campaigning for better housing conditions, Housing Rebellion, a group who have recently conducted some publicity-raising occupations, including Clifton Court, that block that’s shamefully being demolished by profiteers, and Southern Housing Action – a tenants’ group who got together to address the housing association that’s responsible for a lot of the poor housing in town.
It’s a real shame the councillor with the main housing brief didn’t come – it rather left the council leader saying “I don’t know” a lot when she took a Q and A but there was a good attendance by councillors, particularly Greens and Independents.
When we’d all had time to talk to all those organizations and each other, we ran a mini-assembly, to go over what the main issues were, what the answers might be and most importantly, given that the Greens seem to reckon there’s not much they can do as councillors, what we as a community might do about it all.
Problems
There do seem to be problems at every level – we discussed homelessness, the difficulties people have in temporary accommodation and the long, frustrating wait they have whilst buildings stand empty around them; the shocking rise in costs for those who own their own homes; water damage caused sometimes by freak weather but lately by Southern Water; the struggles flat owners have with leaseholders and freeholders when it comes to what repairs should be done and who should pay what, and above all, the problems of renters — short lets, high rents and in many areas of Hastings, housing in a horrible state of disrepair. Tower block residents in particular also tell of being very poorly treated – for example having to wade through dust on landings when asbestos was being removed. Finally, being a popular tourist destination, we talked about the ever-increasing proportion of local properties that are let out as holiday homes instead of real homes.
Solutions
Just about everyone thought the most urgent need is for council houses – built, owned and managed by the council – and an end to right-to-buy, so that they stay council houses. On the one hand, that would (obviously) increase the available housing but it would also help to keep rents down, as landlords would have to compete with a genuinely affordable housing stock. Someone spoke about the ridiculously cheap mortgage deals buy-to-let businesses get, and we thought council or housing association rent-to-buy schemes would be more useful. We discussed the way government policy always seems to favour big investors and, we dreamed, wouldn’t it be nice if Labour were somehow different to the last government.
As to what we could do, there were lots of ideas – some campaign projects we can do ourselves but also ideas that would need help from the council – such as people saying they’d be happy to volunteer in running shelter and/or halfway houses if the council would free up buildings to use. We talked about co-ops and occupation and – an idea I really fancy – we should all have a bunch of stickers in our pockets to put on the windows of empty houses wherever we see them. Some ideas for stickers…
We asked variously for a register of public land and a public register of landlords, so campaigns can be better focused – both of which councillors are apparently looking into. There was loads more but my pen only moves so fast!
And on top of all that, the afternoon was genuinely good fun – meeting up with people, kids playing in and out of the trees, parents snacking in the sunshine, listening to the various entertainers who came along and all of us remembering that we have a really nice green here. We ought to use it more often.
The fun thing is not just a flippant thing, it’s a political thing. The attendance at that meeting was changing all afternoon long. There were the people who came on purpose because they knew about it but also a stream of people who came and went during the afternoon because they saw us there, and realized they had something to say to their neighbours and councillors.
We seriously need to get together more, and in larger numbers. We have politicians who’ve confirmed they aren’t going to fix things themselves so we need much larger groups of citizens visibly organizing and making their needs known. Some might argue about how effective community action is but one thing is absolutely certain – the larger the number of people in a campaign group, the more clout they have.
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Cheers,
Kay
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Kay Green 