Originally Posted by
Howie
If homeowners were being offered enough to buy another property elsewhere, maybe you would have a point, but they are not. Why after years of paying a mortgage should Liz allow her home to be taken off her for no reason other than making a road look better to visitors? She can't start out again on the property ladder at her age. Why should she be forced into rented accommodation? If they get away with this she would have been better off spending her life sponging off the State and getting rent paid than working hard and paying a mortgage. Strange values we have!
The solution is easy - just offer the homeowners enough that they may remain homeowners. And don't say these homeowners are offered the market value for their properties. The market values are artificially lowered as a result of the regeneration activity. They should be offered the market value of an equivalent property outside the demolition area. After all they are not demolishing these houses because they are structurally unsound or to widen the road. They are being demolished so that Kensington and Wavertree can be hidden from the visitors to the European Capital of Culture 2008 behind rows of pretty new apartments.
Why should they be offered market value when their houses aren't worth market value. Liz was offered around 70,000 for her property plus the option of a new home somewhere else as where alot of other people. This way she would still be a homeowner. Even if she didn't take the option of a new house, 70,000 is a significant deposit on what would be a very nice house.
These houses aren't wanted by anyone and alot of them are structurally unsound, you only have to go up to some of them and see that they have signs on the front door saying ' Danger, unsafe building, do not enter'.
All this about them just making the road nicer and hiding Kenny from visitors is a load of bulls###t. If they where just making the road nicer, why are they moving the road and widening it, why are they creating better access to things like the lifebank, why are they creating a new park for the public, why are they creating new businesses which will create nearly 2000 jobs and why are they creating new low cost housing for local people? If they where trying to hide Kenny from visitors, why are areas of Kenny which no visitors will ever see being refurbished and regenerated such as Leopold Road and the surrounding roads, Prescot road shops and the new sports centre behind the library plus numerous other roads and wastelands.
If these houses are still here in 2-3 years, they will still be empty, there will still be no local amenities, crime will be even worse, quality of life will be even worse and Edge Lane will be gridlocked, and then we can all look back at what could have been. Local people are the most important thing, but there aren't many local people left here, and there hasn't been for about 20 yrs. Image to visitors is also important. Tourism is Liverpools' biggest source of income and if people are coming here and it is a dump, no-one will come again so we will lose vast amounts of money which will leave no money to be spent on regeneration. The image is also important to Liverpool people. I want to walk around this city and feel proud of it. There are too many areas of Liverpool that I walk around and feel depressed and ashamed that they exist.
This is a vital project, which some people don't want, but most people do want and need. If it doesn't go ahead, I dread to think what this area is going to be like in a couple of years!
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