Background Information and potted history of "Shortlife" 1. Back in the late seventies and early eighties, the London Borough of Camden condemned a large number of their properties as being unfit for use. They emptied the houses of their tenants, found homes for them, and made the now empty buildings over to, amongst others, WHHA.
2. These properties were never made fit for use. They were made safe by attending to gas and electricity. If necessary, the roof was given very basic first aid. One gas fire was fitted to the room of the tenants choice, and that was it. (Initially, an elderly cooker was fitted. Nowadays, this is not offered).
3. In the early days, a reasonable rent was charged to reflect the state of the premises, the need for tenants to do a lot of their own repairs, and the likelihood of very high heating bills in the winter months.
4. Nowadays, we are being charged much more than Council tenants living in fully rehabilitated premises. We received massive rent increases in the early to mid nineties with a promise that the funds were needed to provide us with permanent flats in due course. This seemed like a sort of housing pension fund", and nobody really complained. (Before the Chair of the T.A. was removed from the Management Board, he heard the Board being told that the reason for shortlife tenants getting additional large rent increases instead of permanent tenants was that the Housing Corporation was blocking large rent increases for permanent tenants - so, the shortlife people had to pick up the tab).
5. We have families with children half way through their GCSEs, and they are being told that eviction is no problem: they can just change schools.
6. None of us belong to the image of shortlife tenants. We aren't squatters, teenage eco-warriors or student back packers. The truth is that we belong to our communities now, and this should be considered. Many of us are late middle aged.
7. In 1998, WHHA wanted an extra discount when buying our homes from Camden, and in return for this discount, they have negotiated to lose the right to keep even one in four flats for some of us to continue to live in our community.
The discount amounts to a saving to them of £336,250. Since there are 19 flats involved in the current project, the "Messina 7", they could have done a deal keeping 5 flats for some their tenants. Instead, they tried to negotiate a deal involving selling off those 5 tenants at £67,250 per head. Using current prices and conditions, ( - a cheat, admittedly, but it avoids wrestling with the maths of adjusting for inflation etc.) many of us have paid WHHA around £50,000 in rent over the past two decades, and so it could be argued that they were expecting to receive £50,000 + £67,250 per tenant. We have not cost them very much over the years. Are we not entitled to some consideration in return?
Since then, the legal position has changed. The courts have said that the shortlife "licence" is a "sham", and that all of us are tenants, and those of us starting with WHHA prior to January 15th 1989 are secure tenants. Despite the fact that it was their barrister working for them that achieved this, the ex-Chair of Management Board, Roger Barcroft, is still in denial.
Will his successor, Richard Parkhill, spend another estimated £100,000 of housing money on legal bills to fight another abortive round against the next wave of tenants to be evicted?
8. Had WHHA consulted with tenants early, some of us might have applied for the Do-It-Yourself Shared Ownership Scheme, Home Buy and other ideas. But they didn't.
9. As it turned out, WHHA never told us what they had decided to do with our homes. We discovered for the first time what was going on from the agenda and minutes of the London Borough of Camden's Housing Committee in the spring of 1998. Then we get from them an abrupt letter and a Notice Seeking Possession.
10. Since our campaign started in February 1998, one of us has been offered a flat which she turned it down because her potential new neighbours pointed out that the previous tenant had said that when he came out of prison, he would come back with others to kill anyone he found in what he considered to be his flat. The neighbours have been supplied with special phones with a special panic button. The police are required to arrive within 120 seconds. Since she turned down the flat, several more tenants have been offered it but without being told of the problem. (This was mentioned to WHHA's ex-Chief Executive, Anna Bowman. She said that her hands were tied because she had to do deals involving the housing of people with special needs. When asked for an absolute assurance that the safety of tenants would never be put at risk, she refused.)
11. WHHA have pulled funding for their Tenants Association without providing any alternative. They will not give the T.A. the usual quarterly update of tenants addresses, and so contacting people is doubly difficult since so many have moved. They closed down its bank account, seized the balance, shut down their office, and closed down their telephone resulting in the loss of the phone number .(They complained that the T.A.'s accounts were not audited - fair enough - but they refused either to appoint an auditor or cover the cost).
12. And now, under the watchful eye of the regulator, the Housing Corporation, the Association appears to have gone bust ... along with our "pension fund" (see paragraph 4). Who polices the policeman?
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