Change and decay
John Torode
Ours is a nice house. At least it was until eighteen months ago when Camden Council laid its compulsory claws on the property. Since then it has been left standing empty by the council, broken into, vandalised, squatted, surrendered by the squatters because the council claimed (untruthfully) that it was needed urgently, abandoned once again by Camden, broken into again, vandalised again, squatted briefly once again, abandoned by the second set of squatters and finally boarded up with corrugated iron sheeting. When I last passed MY old homestead, on 12 July, the corrugated iron was still up on the windows but the front door had been kicked in. The interior was a mess. Passing meths drinkers, tranlPs, under-age drop-outs (the untrendy derelicts whom even Camden hesitates to designate as 'licensed squatters') had apparently taken over. We bought the house, 105 Leighton Road, Kentish Town, fifteen years ago — long before NW5 became fashionable. It Cost little more than £4,000 from a King's Cross railway guard who was preparing to retire and move to Southend. We spent almost as much doing it up. Camden proykled the mortgage and the then pretty min grants and so supervised the conversion. In the end we had the standard, raiddle-class, inner-city set-up — a modernised Victorian terraced house in what the estate agents learned to call 'a mixed but uP-and-coming area'. Four bedrooms, lots of built-in furniture, a knocked-through double living room, two bathrooms, a new dining room and kitchen.
Admittedly the neighbourhood upped and came a bit, but, thank heaven, not too ni. uch. Essentially it remained an area of Miler city deprivation seeded with the odd t.nedla personality. Des Wilson, then king of Inner city deprivation, moved in up the road ,ten years ago. Gillian Tindall renovated a large and elegant late Georgian house down the road by the pub (and wrote a brilliant history of the area, The Fields Beneath). We even got our very own race relater. A top man in that growth industry bought one of, the big houses opposite us. All that was left Was to be declared an official housing action a. tea (HAA) and that, using the 1974 Housing Act, Camden duly did for us. We were — trendy old Camden — the first HAA in the
land.
HAAs are, in theory (and, for all I know, if properly administered, in practice too), a Goo. d Thing. Renovation not destruction. alighted areas pulled up by their own boot straps. Community feelings respected. Council property, private homes and carefully controlled commercial lettings side by
side. Rachmanism abolished at a stroke. We were excited when the leaflets dropped through our letter box.
Recently I sought more details. 'Rehabilitation, improvement, conversion' were the phrases of the man from the ministry as he briefed me on the 1974 Act. 'Areas of stress . . . bad physical conditions . . . social problems . . . multi-occupation.' On the one hand owners and landlords in HAAs can collect bigger and better grants for modernisation. On the other they can be compelled by the council to improve substandard housing even against their wishes.
In 1976, bang in the middle of the public expenditure squeeze, we decided to move and told the council so. Camden scratched around, raised the £18,500 we were asking and compulsorily bought the place. Which was fine for us. The price was a bit tight but it saved a lot of trouble. It did not, however, do anything for the people in the multioccupation, semi-slums down the road. Neither did it facilitate the renovation of 105 because — give or take a little touching-up — it was renovated already. But at least, so we thought, some worthy family on Camden's chronic housing list was going to move into a desirable family residence.
Camden took over the house in March 1977, whereupon the doors were bolted and padlocked. Children soon broke in and started smashing the place up. Meanwhile, in another part of the Camden jungle, a friend, a mother with a very young child, was deserted by her husband. Enter the council's social services department who had nowhere, to house her. So they popped mother and child into one small, scruffy room in a bed-and-breakfast dive somewhere north of King's Cross.
That summer, after 105 had stood empty and abandoned for at least three months, I tipped my friend the wink. Late one Saturday night she moved in. Conspiracy to squat, on my part, no doubt and grossly irresponsible. But at least I had done my bit to cut Camden's housing list and local government expenditure. The girl, who soon collected a boy friend, spent much of the summer making the place habitable again and eventually came to an understanding with the authorities. Last autumn she agreed to move on when Camden told her the house was finally needed for renovation and surely she didn't want to hold up the programme. Whereupon the house was boarded up once again and left to decay quietly — apart from the odd break-in. Recently the place has 'gown corrugated iron sheeting too. And there the matter rests: Nine months later the house is still unoccupied: from time to time the iron is ripped off and vandals break in. Eventually it is replaced for a while.
On 13 July this year a spokesman for Camden told me that houses in good condition —like mine —were bought in HAAs to provide accommodation 'temporary or permanent' for local people while their own sub-standard places were being done up. That way renovation did not disturb the community. Sadly, said Camden, 105 could not be used for that purpose because it had been squatted. On the contrary, I replied, 105 had been squatted precisely because it had never been used to provide accommodation, temporary or permanent. No comment, although she would check back. And why had it not been used, temporarily or permanently, since the squat was surrendered nine months ago? Ditto. Why was it still empty, vandalised and with its front door kicked in? (It has subsequently been boarded up yet again.) Ditto. So far no detailed information has been forthcoming.
Disheartened, I abandoned my final set of questions: what good had it done Britain's first HAA to invest £18,500 in converting a pleasant though scruffy family home into an uninhabited (and almost uninhabitable) dump? What do the neighbours think? Whose bright idea was it? Has his bottom been kicked severely? Or is he still spreading his own form of inner city blight at public eipense across Camden's HAAs?
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