[Ben Reeve
Lewis is celebrating Octavia Hill this week …]
Believe it or not its quite a landmark week in housing. It marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Octavia Hill.
Who she? You may ask.
Who was Octavia Hill?
Octavia Hill was a dynamo of the Victorian era, a seminal figure behind the whole notion of social housing, how it worked and what it stands for.
Much of her thinking is still at the forefront today, especially in terms of seeing housing as part of a wider concerns of community and environment.
There have been quite a few articles and a documentary on Radio 4 this week which I couldn’t listen to because Frazzy insisted on repeatedly and absentmindedly singing “I’ve got a feeling” by Black Eyed Peas all the way through the programme. That’s what iPlayer was invented for, noisy wives.
Octavia in South London
There was a good article in the Guardian about Octavia and what we can learn from her legacy. I did a bit more digging and found to my surprise that she operated ‘Dahn my manor’ of Deptford and various bits of Lewisham, saving Hilly Fields from being developed because the good people of built up Victorian Deptford used to go there for a bit of relaxing green space and to pick flowers.
She managed to get 3,000 safe and affordable homes built (that’s ‘Affordable’ as in the genuine meaning of the word, not as in ‘Affordable rents’, an idea she would have been incensed by).
Collecting the rent
She would personally collect the rent and in doing so built relationships with the tenants and came to understand their needs. Housing law trainer Barry Marlow, an old mate of mine started out life as a teenaged rent collector, knocking on doors with a clipboard and loved the job, saying rent arrears were lower and collection was more flexible when working on that level.
Even though I love what technology can do and am a big fan of apps I get what he says. The human scale of things that is often missing from social housing in a lot of areas.
Octavia Housing and the National Trust
Octavia Housing, which was founded by her is still running and involves tenants in every level of operations, including employing them in the organisation.
Octavia stated aims were simple, she said;
“To make lives noble, homes happy and family life good”.
And guess what? As well as getting her hands dirty in urban London she also created the National Trust. Where are the far seeing thinkers like her in 2012? Certainly not embodied in that visionary pygmy Grant Shapps.
Ben Cowell of the National Trust said;
“The fact that London has so many green spaces today is only because of Octavia Hill’s work in the 1880s. We needed it then and we need it now. But the solution to the housing shortage has to be in smart, well-designed open spaces. People who are living in communal buildings should have access to shared open spaces that are attractive and well looked after.”
Well said Ben, and a happy death day to Octavia.
Planet Property
My most recent housing blog discovery is Planet Property, an offbeat site that I am coming to enjoy reading. This week they carried 2 stories from opposite ends of the spectrum, the most desirable house in the country and arguably the least desirable.
Would you live in a converted funeral home? I might if it didn’t still look like one as the photo accompanying the article evidently does. There are hardly any windows and there’s a bloody great stone cross embedded in the wall.
The estate agents blurb describes it as a ‘Spacious Modern bungalow’. Hmmm, maybe one for the Goths.
The other property is apparently the most sought after cottage in the whole country.
The owners of 20 years say they are constantly beset with people knocking on their door asking if they want to sell. With the value in excess of £3 million I would imagine many an embarrassed, downturned face at the shattering news delivered on the rose-strewn doorstep.
The good people at Planet Property point out that this article was front page in the Daily mail, ahead of news from Syria or the Olympics and couldn’t help but ponder on whether the owner works for the Mail and may be looking to sell.
I of course am making no such comment, I’m just noting what was said. My office copy of ‘An outline of the laws of evidence’ that I use to prosecute landlords, informs me that this is known as Res Gestae, something that is merely being reported as having been said, not vouching for the truth of any such statement itself. So there.
The impending disaster
Now as you know for quite some time now the housing and welfare workers of this green and pleasant land have been shouting at Lord Fraud about the impending disaster of Universal Credit and it’s associated legislation. Completely heedless of the danger (well he wont be affected by it will he? So why listen?) he is ploughing on regardless.
Part of the changes involve the way that housing benefit will be paid, reducing centralised decisions and promoting locally based assessments. This means new IT systems have to be put in place to facilitate new ways of working.
A boom time for IT firms who you would imagine would be falling over themselves to get the contracts but no. Quite the reverse.
A poisoned chalice?
Reported on 24 Dash Councillor Theo Blackwell, cabinet member for Finance at Camden council says they are having trouble getting IT firms who want the gig. He says;
“Every authority I have spoken to has found it difficult to find an affordable IT company to devise a scheme for this because they’re pricing in massive risk and the regulations have been late. There is not much time to test and implement it. They don’t want to be responsible for the collapse of a scheme in an area. They’re either pricing risk in it or are waiting until it pans out.”
So even those profit making concerns who may be expected to make a killing from the new plans are staying clear of it. Like a person on their third week of Weightwatchers walking through a cake shop, studiously looking neither right nor left.
Clive Betts, chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee said of it;
“I just think back to Sheffield in 1999 when we had privatised the housing benefit service and transferred it to Capita in a rushed and botched way.
I remember the constituents, often elderly, coming to my surgeries in tears not because they had done anything wrong but because the administration of their benefits was in chaos and, as a result, the arrears on their council tax and rent had risen.
They were distraught because they had never been in arrears in their lives. I worry that we will go back to that situation.”
Where is Octavia Hill when you need her? She would have had Lord Fraud up against the wall and given him a slap by now. She didn’t grow up around Deptford and not learn a thing or two.
Ben Reeve Lewis
Ben’s runs Home Saving Expert, where he shares his secrets on defending people’s homes from mortgage repossession Visit his blog and get some help and advice on mortgage difficulties, catch up with him on Twitter and check out his free report “An Encouraging note on Dealing with your Mortgage Lender” and have it sent right to your inbox.
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Remember Labour’s cunning ID cards plan? When it looked like the Tories might have a hope of being elected, they let it be publicly known that they would not be implementing the fiasco, nor would they pay for it, so any company ploughing ahead would lose money. I’d suggest the same should be done by Labour, and is actually happening hear. It’s obvisou to nayone with half a brain cell that this will fail.