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Government makes profit on council tenants’ rents
• I am a council tenant and proud of it.
One of your readers dared ask the question: how much are we paying for these works? (What have the tenants got to lose, May 21) then proceeded to answer it incorrectly.
Well, here is the answer, from the horse’s mouth.
All of us lowly council tenants have already paid for these works 10 times over.
It’s just that our governments have decided to nick the money and subsidise taxpayers in places like leafy NW3 areas who haven’t got the courage to reveal their names.
I have been following these stories very carefully and visiting all the campaign and government websites.
According to the government’s own admission, it has been making a profit on council tenants’ rents and not investing it back into council housing. So before making statements based on stereotyping, stigma and ignorance, I would encourage your nameless reader to check the facts.
It only takes a little research to discover that we council tenants are getting a raw deal – and Meric Apak in his letter is spot on (We simply want what is ours, May 21) when he states that tenants who are having new kitchens fitted would never have agreed to it on principle if they knew that the council were selling council homes to pay for it.
I have just told my friend this who had her new kitchen installed in Bernard Shaw Court, and she was visibly sickened.
We are not being ungrateful, we do have morals though!
R Mayson
Lisssenden Gardens, NW5
Right to complain
• WHAT have the tenants got to lose? (Letters, May 21).
I will tell you what tenants of the Decent Homes expect. We do not expect to live in dust or dirt nor expect an army of different workers coming in as and when it suits them. We did not expect the work to take a staggering six to seven weeks when the time-scale was three weeks maximum. We did expect the work to be of a high standard.
I do not class painting over old paint on skirting boards to be that.
I am a tenant of the Decent Homes scheme and to be honest my flat was better before. In the beginning I never saw the same two workmen twice. They would arrive and disappear. No-shows for days! I was left with my floors taken up and my bathroom and toilet stripped for a total of five weeks before any work was done. It was nearly four weeks before my kitchen was completed. Now I am left with disgusting skirting boards and plumbing that looks like it was done by a amateur. The kitchens are no better than the cheapest chipboard.
The letter writer stated they paid for a kitchen. Well I can guarantee if you paid for it yourself, even though you had to wait a while to have it completed, it would have been completed to a top quality standard.
You wouldn’t have paid out direct for shabby workmanship! You also say council tenants are getting the work for free. It’s clear you are not a council tenant, we do end up paying in the long term with rent increases.
You also state that council tenants pay much less for properties. It doesn’t matter what we pay out.
We are still entitled and expect a decent quality of work.
Please stop putting down tenants.
If the work had been done properly in the beginning we would all have been happy and the complaints would not have arisen.
Name and address supplied, NW6
Scrutiny fails
• I CAN’T blame any politician who strives to improve my quality of life.
The current administration believes that 50 per cent of council homes in Camden fail the government’s “decent” standard. Tenants have challenged this statistic as a “meltdown conspiracy” invented by officers and their consultants.
It’s unfortunate that the council’s own cross-party scrutiny system has failed to expose this. The consequence of this failure is a decision which tenants have branded as “immoral”.
Despite this, the executive marches on with the sell-off of our homes, genuinely believing they are doing the right thing, explaining that they have an obligation to meet the government’s Decent Homes target.
I do wonder, though, how many tenants on my estate would have complained if Camden took the line of lobbying the government for the cash instead, and wait; at the same time working with us to see how we can find the money to repair those homes which are genuinely in desperate condition.
In all this, I can only be hopeful in that our democracy has designed systems to keep “power” under constant scrutiny.
Meric Apak
Chair, Camden Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations
A nightmare
• YOUR report (Furious tenants slam doors on refurbishment, May 14), merely exposed the tip of what Hilgrove estate tenants have had to face.
The first few months of this contract, which is due to run until September, have been a nightmare for many.
Their homes have been building sites for months, when works should have been completed in 15 days. Kitchens were ripped out before replacements were in stock, leaving people with a void for weeks. There were delays as work had to be redone. Toilets supplied did not fit, so were raised on wooden plinths. Contractors walked off site through non-payment. Many appointments were missed, without compensation, particularly affecting those who had taken time off work.
Concerns raised by the residents association about kitchen designs led to all the work of one of two planners being revisited.
A lack of clarity in the council’s brief meant that kitchen wiring was not chased beneath the surface. This method of work has changed, but not before 31 homes had wiring installed, with plastic surface conduits marring the integrity of their kitchen wall tiles.
Thankfully reports to us are that there have been definite improvements.
But this would not have happened if there had been proper preparation before the contract and the TRA had been involved before works started on site. .
It is clear the council is trying to achieve Decent Homes on the cheap, in order to meet government targets. The steel in the kitchen sinks is so thin that they bounce. The taps are of a poor quality. Kitchens and bathrooms, areas of high condensation, are being painted, without any preparation, with matt emulsion, impossible to wipe down or clean.
Worst of all, the council’s version of a 21st century bathroom is pillar taps and three rows of tiles above the bath, no mixer taps or shower attachments. No other social landlord has done it this way. Showers are more economical and obviously ecologically better. The council that asserts it is “green” should be ashamed.
The policy of repair rather than replace, which claimed to have tenants’ backing through a few manipulated focus groups, has not been followed anywhere else. It is more difficult for contractors to carry out works this way. Above all tenants should have been involved in drawing up the brief for Decent Homes.
It is scandalous that this is being financed by selling off badly needed housing and transferring properties, for 35 years, to be privately rented out. The council has over 17,000 families on its waiting list, many in desperate need.
On average they house 1,000 households a year. The current policy means that 10 per cent less will be given a home each year, leaving them languishing in expensive temporary accommodation at additional cost to every council taxpayer.
John Rolfe
Chair Hilgrove Estate Residents Association
No sell-offs
• IT’S true that as council tenants we are always prime targets for being portrayed as ungrateful whingers.
Those of us lucky enough to be in work do pay our taxes and rents, rents which the government is using to subsidise normal taxpayers instead of paying this back to councils to maintain our homes.
So estates fall in to disrepair, which in turn serves the government agenda of getting rid of council housing.
Say no to sell offs, no to private market rentals of council homes.
I shall be refusing a new kitchen and bathroom if it is going to be funded through such immoral means.
Gerry Abrahams
Peckwater Street, NW5
Economics of auctions
• I AM writing with regard to your partisan attitude to Camden’s policy of auctioning off some of its property to the private sector (Summer sale: Your homes, May 21).
Out of curiosity I viewed the one-bed flat in Hemstal Road and found it to be nothing more than a dilapidated shell in need of far more refurbishment than just a new kitchen and bathroom.
I would estimate the very minimum to refurbish the property would be £25,000. Similarly, at a very rough guess, the houses in Messina Avenue and Iverson Road would require £100,000 a piece to bring them up to scratch. That’s £225,000 for just three properties,
Also you make no mention of who allowed these properties to fall into such a bad state of repair in the first place, and I would suggest that the previous Labour administration must be culpable to a very fair degree.
I have no objection to my council tax being spent on refurbishing council properties. However, many private tenants are currently struggling to make ends meet and whether the money comes from local taxes or central government, it’s still our money and we want it wisely spent.
Where the outlay to refurbish a property is totally uneconomical, I see no reason why it should not be sold in the private sector and the money raised be spent on properties that can be improved at a reasonable cost to those of us who supply the funds.
Name and address supplied, NW6
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