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Housing plan fails to add up
AS you point out in your comment in the YEP of October 1, it is always necessary to look behind the numbers when looking at house building particularly if the 'Folks who live on the hill' are to be helped.
The demolition planned for Holbeck will remove 685 council housing units yet the "social housing" element of the proposed regeneration programme will only provide 350 housing units. The rest of the development will be homes for sale.
We have seen in Gipton that when private developers are relied upon to provide homes they fail to provide houses which are affordable to those who have been "cleared".
Coun Congreve says he is not keen on PFI (private finance initiative). We fear that the good people of Holbeck and Beeston Hill will, in due course, discover that the private sector will not be providing them with decent and affordable housing.
So where will people go? With the council house waiting list getting ever longer and people "bidding" for a home each Wednesday in competition with hundreds of other people we expect that many people will join the desperately unfortunate Thackray family described in the YEP of September 30 who have been split up to live with members of the extended family.
It is about 45 years since Ken Loach produced the TV drama Cathy Come Home but the problems of housing provision still remain. The Government has the money for banking bail-outs and wars so why no money for housing of a decent standard?
John Davies, chair of Hands Off Our Homes, www.handsoffour homes.org.uk
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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