Campaign news

Reject the ‘Haringey Development Vehicle’

14th February 2017

Reject the ‘Haringey Development Vehicle’

Letter to ‘Guardian’ 13.02.16

We write in solidarity with up to 15,000 households and 508 businesses who live and work on council land in the London borough of Haringey. The cabinet of the council meets on 14 February to decide whether to enter into a 50/50 partnership with a private developer, handing over £2bn of council assets – involving unprecedented political and financial risks. This monstrous “Haringey development vehicle” will demolish and uproot many council homes and workplaces.
Currently, 100% of council homes are affordable. Council leaders are promising that at least 40% of the rebuilt and extra homes will be affordable, leaving the obvious conclusion that most will not be. Therefore communities will be destroyed and the council will be struggling to house families and individuals in and outside the borough in a housing market short of homes.

The private developer will apply continual pressure to increase the number of homes that can be sold at market prices to increase profitability. The council wants to “smarten up” the council estates next to the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium. Yet again the rich and powerful are conspiring to enclose public land and yet again it would be to the detriment of most of those who now live and work there.

Dave Morris Haringey Federation of Residents Associations
Martin Ball Our Tottenham
Gordon Peters Haringey Green Party
Doug Thorpe Haringey Left Unity
Carol Wilcox Secretary, Labour Land Campaign
Elaine Graham-Leigh Chair, North London People’s Assembly Against Austerity
Bob Ellard Disabled People Against Cuts,
Islington Haringey GMB Trade Union
Paul Burnham Secretary, Haringey Defend Council Housing
Paul Kershaw Chair, Unite LE1111 Housing workers
Chris Roche RIBA 11.04 Architects
Rev. Paul Nicholson, Taxpayers Against poverty
and more than 1,000 others

Background

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