Around 13 million rent from private landlords. ibid.
Most landlords simply won’t rent to people on housing benefit. ibid.
The families without security: how landlords can call the shots. We’re with Britain’s most controversial landlord as he evicts hundreds of people. In some streets every family could be out. It’s all perfectly legal because private tenants have so little security. Panorama: Britain’s Most Controversial Landlord, BBC 2019
No-fault evictions called Section 21s are completely legal and very common. ibid.
What’s gone wrong with our housing? A third of us used to live in council homes. Now we have ageing and rundown properties. And greedy landlords cashing in. Panorama: What’s Gone Wrong With Our Housing? BBC 2023
Nationally we have a housing crisis. ibid.
They were being sold but not replaced. ibid.
It’s estimated that 40% of the council homes sold in London are now earned by private Landlords. ibid.
The council transferred the houses they still owned to a housing association. Across England, housing associations now manage 2.5 million properties. ibid.
‘This is like the days of Victorian slums of yesteryear.’ ibid. lawyer
Four out of ten council homes sold under the right-to-buy policy are now owned by private landlords. The failure to replace these homes is a key reason for the current lack of affordable housing. Due to budget cuts from central government, councils are working in partnership with property developers to ‘regenerate’ council estates and meet demand for social housing in inner city areas. But the demolition of homes, replaced with housing that is unaffordable to the original residents, has led critics to describe the process as ‘social cleansing’. Social Housing, Social Cleansing ***** Channel 5 2018
20 years later, residents of the Aylesbury [estate, Southwark] might wonder what happened to New Labour’s bold vision of the future. ibid.
The Heygate estate: forecasted profit from sales to Lendlease: £194m; forecasted profit from sales for Southwark Council £0. ibid.
‘I believe it was a deliberate strategy by the local authority.’ ibid. Steve Turner, assistant general secretary Unite, re Heygate
In 2003 Glasgow City Council transferred its entire housing stock to the Glasgow Housing Association, a new private company. ibid.
With only 4% voting in favour of demolition, Lambeth opted to proceed with plans to demolish all 306 houses on the estate. ibid.
In 2017 there were more than 19,000 people on the waiting list for social housing in Tower Hamlets, 3,018 of whom had been on the list for ten years or longer. ibid.
In 2016 the number of affordable homes built in Britain fell to a 24-year low. ibid.
Grenfell Tower is 24 storeys high. Inside are 128 homes. On 14th June 2017 a fire breaks out in Grenfell Tower. What happens over the next 24 hours will change how we view social housing forever. Grenfell Tower: Minute by Minute, captions, Channel 5 2018
‘You can’t imagine how quick it is.’ ibid. resident, re fire spread
There is one staircase in Grenfell Tower: it is quickly filling with black smoke. ibid.
‘You felt the generosity and the warmth of people.’ ibid. resident
‘It was like a goodbye message.’ ibid. brother, re sister
A public inquiry into the causes of the Grenfell Tower fire has begun. 71 people are confirmed to have died in the Grenfell Tower fire. ibid.
Families trapped in an unimaginable nightmare from which for many there would be no escape. James Nesbitt: Disasters that Changed Britain VI: Grenfell Tower, History 2018
The fire at Grenfell Tower: In the early hours of 14th June 2017 a fire ripped through Grenfell Tower in west London. 71 people lost their lives and an entire community was left devastated. ibid.
The problems began decades earlier. ibid.
It would be constructed using the latest building techniques: precast concrete blocks. ibid.
The Utopian dream of tower-block heaven began to fade. All over the country poor maintenance, vandalism and social deprivation turned the streets in the sky into slums in the sky. ibid.
‘We moved in here November 2010 and it’s taken up most of our life ever since. A lot of people wouldn’t have anything to do with the house. The House is Innocent, Tom Williams, short 12.33, 2015
1988: ‘Sacramento homicide detectives say they are digging up what they believe is the remains of at least one body … 1426F Street.’ ibid. news
‘Crews pulled a fifth body from a shallow grave today wrapped in a sheet – police couldn’t tell if the victim was male or female. The woman believed responsible for the deaths is 71 year old Dorothea Puente.’ ibid.
The process of opting-out of your smart meter is like being bullied by kids at school. The Epic Saga of a Smart-Meter Opt-Out, Youtube 2017 46.43
A waste … costing more not less, wasting more energy than they save, and even that the meters are an unjustifiable and unnecessary intrusion. ibid.
It’s sending out very high pulses. ibid.
Multiple hoops that you have to jump through in order to actually opt out. ibid.
Between $169-200. ibid.
Two Naperville Women Arrested After Trying To Block ‘Smart Meters’. ibid. headline
‘You will be required to pay other fees and charges …’ ibid. letter from electricity supplier
And left us there with no meter and no power in December in the cold with children. I was not a happy person that day. ibid.
We were lucky our house hadn’t burnt down. ibid.
I have to pay out of hours fees on top of their mistake … You don’t even know how much it is. ibid.
We’re in bureaucratic hell. ibid.
A hundred years ago today the Addison Act was passed: it kickstarted council housing as we know it. But now it’s in crisis. We now have four million fewer council houses than we used to. George Clarke’s Council House Scandal, Channel 4 2019
This housing nightmare has to be fixed. ibid.
Everyone should have the option of being able to live in a decent quality house of rent. ibid.
A crisis caused by lack of investment over decades. ibid.
In Britain there are over one million people on the waiting list. ibid.
The Addison Act financed construction of a quarter of a million homes over three years. ibid.
There’s no grand vision … We can do it. ibid.
Over 100,000 children living in temporary accommodation. ibid.
The last time we built council housing at scale was the sixties and early seventies. ibid.
The so-called accommodation units that put our country to shame. ibid.
Firstly, and I’m not naming names, I have recently noticed that the house reeks of decaying flesh and there are dead birds everywhere. What We Do in the Shadows s2e1: Resurrection, BBC 2020
The most fragmented decade of them all: 1970s. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time of wisdom, it was a time of foolishness, the ’70s started on a rising tide of ’60s’ optimism and modernity. The Home that 2 Built s1e2: Seventies
The first time in our history when more people owned their house than rented. ibid.
BBC reflected the new house-owning fashion in their hit comedy of the period: 1972’s The Return of the Likely Lads. ibid.
The housing boom created a golden age of DIY as people started to do up old houses or repair new ones. ibid.
Make Your Own Furniture with Albert Jackson & David Day. ibid.
BBC2 was much much happier with more traditional forms of horticulture. With well ordered gardens in a disordered world. ibid.
Geoffrey Smith: All in a Day’s Gardening. ibid.
‘We’ve gone through a very silly period when we thought that man with his technology was all powerful and could save us from every kind of ill.’ ibid. Professor Magnus Pike
‘Gardening was suddenly regarded as sexy.’ The Home that 2 Built s1e3: Eighties, Alan Titchmarsh re fellow gardener Charlie
The decade of loads-a-money: thanks to fast cash and even faster technology British home life changed quicker than ever before in the ’80s. More people would own their homes, more money would be spent on them, and more time spent in them. ibid.