Demolishing arguments

[Jericho]

No one in any of these clearance areas from Gerrard Gardens to the Edge Lane area to the Welsh Streets to Anfield to ... was ever given the choice of being able to stay in a rennovated house. Areas didn't become derelict overnight - the process was slow and is still ongoing. LCC treats the residents in these areas with contempt. It lectures them about what is best for them and their community and its officers assume that they know best! Lies are told about the state of Victorian and Edwardian terraced housing and how difficult it is to rennovate them. Most of the St Michael's area is composed of terraced housing built in a similar fashion to terraced housing in the areas described above and people don't have any problems rennovating their properties. If it can be done in St Michael's it can be done elsewhere.

[kat2]

Jericho,
no lies are told certainly not from hard hitting facts on paper, generally for a building company to be able to do up victorian homes is extremely costly, why? well, compliance with current building regulations compliance with EEC directives which keep changing year on year, such things as the carbon footprint (which this new PM is keen to reduce) if you brought a victorian house up to todays standard (and if at all possible) it would take years to get a return on your money simply put all that has changed is the interior of the house, the surrounding infa structure , such as green spaces, places to park cars, community centers, health centers theres no where to put them without demolition. All we would see is the same victorian housing which fell into decline because there was no infa structure around them. I suppose really I do blame the council but now at least in some areas (not liverpool I may hasten to add) they are bringing about enforcement regulations to make home owners bring their propertys up to a decent environmental standard. Many of the old victorian houses were bought up by landlords cashing in on people like students, but that holiday has ended now because of the strict regulations and licensing of housing in Multiple occupancy, such things as fire precautioning, parking availability, and getting a council license have seen alot of the Lenard rossiters off! *g*! and about time too.
You dont just look at the housing stock, you look at what is happening around the housing stock, such as crime, health, employment.
kat

[Jericho]

Jericho,
no lies are told certainly not from hard hitting facts on paper, generally for a building company to be able to do up victorian homes is extremely costly, why? well, compliance with current building regulations compliance with EEC directives which keep changing year on year, such things as the carbon footprint (which this new PM is keen to reduce) if you brought a victorian house up to todays standard (and if at all possible) it would take years to get a return on your money simply put all that has changed is the interior of the house, the surrounding infa structure , such as green spaces, places to park cars, community centers, health centers theres no where to put them without demolition. All we would see is the same victorian housing which fell into decline because there was no infa structure around them. I suppose really I do blame the council but now at least in some areas (not liverpool I may hasten to add) they are bringing about enforcement regulations to make home owners bring their propertys up to a decent environmental standard. Many of the old victorian houses were bought up by landlords cashing in on people like students, but that holiday has ended now because of the strict regulations and licensing of housing in Multiple occupancy, such things as fire precautioning, parking availability, and getting a council license have seen alot of the Lenard rossiters off! *g*! and about time too.
You dont just look at the housing stock, you look at what is happening around the housing stock, such as crime, health, employment.
kat

Whether it's Victorian/Edwardian rennovations of large houses along Princes Drive, Aigburth Drive, wherever - all I see is success with people getting a good return for their investments. Where it has been tried it has worked. Do you know of examples where it has been tried and it has been a disaster?

Costs would come down, too, with firms competing to offer the best rennovation deal to meet the most stringent standards. Costs could also be recouped when people sell their homes.

The terraced houses off Windsor Street (2 minutes walk from the Welsh Streets) are in the same socio-economic area and are popular with first time buyers and people who want to rent a house and not a flat. Many of these houses aren't as well built as the Welsh Street ones.

As for parking, etc. The residents of the St Michael's area (one of the city's property hotspots) manage well enough. Security is maintained through gated entries.

The time is ripe for a serious rethink. There is an alternative. People should have a real choice not a forced one.

[kat2]

if the residents do up their own homes that is fine, they are not governed by the many regulations that large building contractors are, and yes, time and again it is not cost viable, oh, and consultation is always key, and residents are listened too, the majority have moved out! have a read through this link
http://www.liverpool-community.org.u...nalVersion.pdf
I have helped in the past revamp old propertys and, sadly it did not improve the over all area, shops, health centers, community center, green spaces and safe areas for children. More over it has been found regeneration brings in new business investment which increases employment.
kat

[taffy]

From today's DP:


Most of you probably haven't seen Cliveden Park. Aesthetically it's not a patch on what a rennovated Welsh Streets could have been. Many of the terrace houses in the Welsh Streets could easily have been converted from two up, two down to four up, four down suitable for families - backyards could have been knocked together to form 'courtyards' . The treelined streets are full of charm (unlike Cleveden Park!).

.

Here's some photos of the Clevedon Park area plus some of the so called Welsh Streets. Most of these are in fact the standard 6 room Welsh builders' design and not the older 4 room two up two down design.

[AK1]

Use bootle as an example. I am moving to a new build apartment in the keble road area of bootle in a few weeks. Here it used to be completely derelict with burnt out victorian houses, poor lighting, high crime levels, prostitution etc etc. Now, some of the houses have been demolished and replaced with new apartments and houses, and some have been completely refuribished both inside and out. In this case it was viable to do so as the surrounding infrastructure already contains things like a community centre, an open green space and roads that are wide enough to accomodate on street parking.

More demolition is planned so that more jobs and facilities can be created, but more renovation of existing terraces is also planned. The housing association and developer performing the work are in constant contact with local residents and have a good relationship with them. Ofcourse there are a few stuborn people who want to keep their existing houses that are due to be demolished, but most people understand the need for some demolition.

The companies involved in the work are going to be managing that area for at least 15 years to ensure the area becomes a good place to live and work. The houses and flats being created are of the highest standards and have off street parking and are affordable with schemes like shared ownership.

I am trying to highlight the fact that every area is different. Some areas may need complete demolition whereas other areas may need partial or no demolition. It all depends on the surrounding infrastructure, facilities, open spaces and affordability of renovation.

[AK1]

Some pics of the Keble road area taken earlier today:

Due for demolition


Some properties recently demolished


Some under construction/completed properties



Recently refurbished terraces


Old against new

[kat2]

some of the new ones are quiet nice, at least they will be thermally cheaper to live in. I like the third photo up. The only critisisem I have is the lack of parking space. At least you can tell the area has been improved, unlike the refurbished houses. It will be interesting to see how long the refurbs last.
I wonder if they changed the back yards?
kat

[AK1]

There is some secure parking that can be seen on the third photo from the bottom, behind the brown gates in between each of the houses. There is space for two cars behind each gate.

[kat2]

thnku, well, they certainly look alot better anyway
lovely photos.
kat

[Kev]

THE £190m scheme to revive Merseyside’s housing market planned to bulldoze too many homes and failed to listen carefully to residents’ wishes, a d@ming report says today.

The National Audit Office highlights a series of weaknesses in the controversial New Heartlands “housing renewal” scheme, covering 130,000 homes across Liverpool, Sefton and Wirral.

The watchdog picks out the Merseyside scheme – one of nine across the North and Midlands – for creating “heightened stress” in neighbourhoods earmarked for demolition.

Its report criticises a failure, in the first years of the scheme, to assess whether homes should be saved because of their importance to national heritage.

And, specifically, it questions the consultation that led to the hotly-fought decision to bulldoze 444 red-brick terraced houses in the Welsh Streets, in Dingle.

New Heartlands is now considering saving 57 of those homes – including Ringo Starr’s childhood home on Madryn Street – after a heritage assessment.

In particular, the NAO questions the decision to demolish after a survey found only a narrow majority – 52% to 48% – in favour.

And it queries why that survey included residents in the surrounding Princes Park area, when it was not those residents’ homes facing the bulldozer.

Toby Evans, the NAO’s audit manager, who visited the Welsh Streets, said: “You have to be very careful claiming majority support on the basis of 52% versus 48%.

“Some of the residents we spoke to said the word redevelopment was used to describe the proposal, when what was planned was demolition.”

David Corner, the NAO’s director, said key recommen-dations – that surveys should be in demolition zones only and not use “redevelopment” to describe demolition – flowed directly from the Welsh Streets visit.

The report also highlighted how the number of homes earmarked for demolition across Merseyside had nearly halved, from 21,000 to just 11,000.

Last night, New Heartlands hit back strongly, insisting it worked long and hard to accurately gauge opinion on the Welsh Streets’ demolition and schemes elsewhere.

Pauline Davis, the organisation’s managing director, said: “I’m confident we have the support of the majority of the community for our plans in the Welsh Streets.

“It was not just a single survey that was taken and it was not just about clearance. That’s why Princes Park was included, because it is part of the broader neighbourhood.”

Ms Davis also defended the decision to halve the number of planned demolitions, which was partly due to the housing market bouncing back.

There was backing for New Heartlands from Louise Ellman, the Riverside MP whose constituency includes the Welsh Streets, who said: “There was no way of pleasing everybody. There was a very big division of opinion and some people were very opposed, but I know of others who have been rehoused and are very pleased with their new homes.”

Much of the NAO’s report makes general criticisms of nine so-called “Pathfinder” projects, including New Heartlands, describing the whole idea – costing £2.2bn – as “high risk”.

The Pathfinder neighbourhoods had succeeded in narrowing the house-price gap with surrounding areas, but it was “unclear” whether the programme itself was the cause.

Worryingly, the average compensation for residents being rehoused fell £35,000 short of the cost of a new home locally.

Government targets require New Heartlands to narrow the gap in vacancy rates between its pathfinder neighbourhoods and the wider region by one third by 2010. Between 2002 and 2006, that gap rose by 7%, although that might be explained by short-term purchases for work to be carried out.

Liverpool Dailypost

[Howie]

Policy is destructive and divides communities
Nov 13 2007
by David Bartlett, Liverpool Daily Post

Housing Market Renewal is a deliberately misleading title.

It does the very opposite of the basics of a free market, the state through councils and housing associations uses vast public funds to purchase up properties and lands to take them off the market.

These public sector agencies then deliberately move people out and board up the area, creating a blight of dereliction.

The remaining owner occupiers are bought out at depressed prices and the few are forced out up by the abuse of compulsory purchase powers.

In areas designated for degradation and demolition, the land is then handed over to a combination of housing associations and one of four national housing builders who have been give a monopoly over the purchase of all significant land sites in their quarter of the inner city.

This deliberate restriction works against local builders and consumer choice.

Outside the inner city, planners obstruct the redevelopment of areas for housing.

Thus we have vast areas of blight outside the city being deliberately withheld from private housing development.

In the current three years, the council intends to demolish 4,000 homes forcing 3,000 families on to the ever-growing housing waiting lists.

This policy we are told has community support but when discussed at the Housing committee, press and public were excluded as it was “confidential”.

The demolition coalition of Lib-Dem and Labour councillors were afraid to debate this municipal vandalism in public.

They claim this policy leads to rises in home ownership.

Buying houses at £70,000 to £120,000 to then demolish then seems a pretty expensive way of doing it.

Who in these working class communities can afford smaller homes starting at £120,000?

In the words of Jane Kennedy MP, it is “social cleansing”.

I challenged for evidence that home ownership rises were not more likely due to private landlords selling their houses to capitalise on rising house prices, but council officers could not bring forward any statistical evidence.

Their policies might as well be driven by reading tea leaves.

In Pathfinder areas, people are paid compensation but the Joseph Rowntree Trust has shown that the average owner occupier will be worse off by £30,000 after the enforced move.

This policy is destructive, divides communities and creates a sinister cartel of council, housing associations and national house builders profiteering by forcing thousands out of their homes abusing hundreds of millions of pounds of our taxes.

Source: Liverpool Daily Post

Absolutely spot on!

[Waterways]

Older poorly insulated homes push low income families into fuel poverty, which has health knock on effects, which in turn affects the economy as well as the personal social distress this causes. Keeping old houses for the sake of it is not a good thing at all.

"contrary to popular belief, we are not living on a crowded and urbanised island, but only in crowded and extremely dense cities."

"Our rigid and nationalised planning system is also delivering the wrong kind of housing. In a March 2005 MORI poll, 50 per cent of those questioned favoured a detached house and 22 per cent a bungalow. Just 2 per cent wanted a low rise flat and 1 per cent a flat in a high rise block. But houses and bungalows use more land, so while in 1990 about an eighth of newly built dwellings were apartments, by 2004 this had increased to just under a half."

"Our housing compares poorly by international standards too. Britain has some of the smallest and oldest housing in Europe, and what is being built now is even smaller than the existing stock. Yet despite this, house prices in the UK have risen much more strongly than other developed countries, meaning that despite real growth in our incomes we are not able to afford more and better housing, in the way that we can afford better cars and food as we get wealthier."

"Recent research into the impact of increased urban densities concluded that
'urban compaction' results in a loss of urban environmental quality and 'questioned whether the loss of environmental quality and urban character in low density housing areas is a price worth paying'. To put those questions more directly than academic researchers might do: do we want gardens to be
more and more expensive and, eventually, built over? Do we want the few low density urban conservation areas we have to be destroyed in order to preserve a few acres of countryside that few can visit? Do we want the whole of every urban area to be covered in tarmac? Should we not keep some trees in urban areas? Do we want playing fields to gradually disappear as being uneconomic, given the price of land? Do we want future generations to live walled up in urban areas in blocks of flats? Do we want biodiversity to be reduced as the scientific evidence shows that it would be?"

Read the documents:

Unaffordable Housing
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/ima...images/143.pdf

Bigger Better Faster More
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/ima...images/141.pdf

Better Homes, Greener Cities
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/ima...images/137.pdf

[AngelCake]

I've read of compensation figures of 30k! What does that buy nowadays? Liverpool council make me sick. Inept year in year out. The biggest winners are private companies as usual

[scottieroader]

The thing is, while I concede that it probably is more cost-effective to demolish historic houses such as those on Edge Lane and build anew than it is to refurbish them, since when does 'cost-effectiveness' trump all other considerations? If, for example, during a future economic downturn the Liver Building was to become derelict, when the economy bounces back will we argue that it will be more cost-effective to demolish it and build something new in its place?

We're the capital of culture for God's sake. Surely somewhere, the difference in cost can be made up by someone. Someone rich with a pride in where they're from (are there no modern philanthropists?), Someone who makes there money out of tourism and has an interest in Liverpool being as attractive as possible?