Social landlords are deviating from their intended purpose

There are 640 out of the 4,000 houses in the Kensington New Deal area, which have been earmarked for demolition. Already about 100 RSL tenants have been moved out of this area and re-housed in other parts of Liverpool away from the New Deal area altogether. The New Deal initiative's philosophy was to make all residents of the New Deal area stakeholders or franchisers of the New Deal initiative. By encouraging tenants to leave the area altogether the new social landlord Community 7 is disenfranchising them from the initiative. This behaviour by C7, which is fully supported by Government's Office for Merseyside and the New Deal administrators, is an antithesis of what New Deal is supposed to stand for.

I have been recently informed by the clever speaking chief exec of C7 that three streets: Nutall, Milroy and Thorburn (about 200 houses) will be used to re-house homeowners who are under threat of demolition within the area. At present there are aprox 100 homeowners and 100 tenants living in these three streets. What C7 intend to do over a five year period and into the foreseeable future is: When tenants move out of these three streets (40 already have and their houses now lay empty) through natural migration is send builders into the properties and do them up at the cost of about £12,000 and then sell them to homeowners who's house in the immediate area will be demolished. Of course this will be done in phases so as to suit the agenda of C7. This means that C7 will kill two birds with one stone, i.e.: They will slowly replace the 100 C7 tenants who live in these streets with homeowners, thus socially cleansing the area of what they and the homeowners perceive to be scum tenants.

In effect C7 are stealing tenants houses and giving them to homeowners for the money that the homeowners have received from the council for their old houses. Were is the social justice in this? Again the housing associations are killing two birds with one stone in as much as they are getting tenants out of the area and increasing home ownership in that same area by selling their properties to homeowners either under threat of demolition or perspective homeowners. This would also indicate that housing associations are deviating from their original remit, which is providing housing for the most vulnerable people within our society and further progressing into property development for sale.

This is a very frightening issue and surely proves that housing associations, or Registered Social Landlords as they are now known, are becoming a powerful oppressive force within our communities. It also give authenticity to the fact that RSL's are progressively championing, all be it surreptitiously, the social cleansing of areas which they want to gentrify. This is a very disturbing and important issue, which must not be overlooked by people who campaign against social injustice. This is a direct result of the Housing Corporation inability to keep RSL's in check. In effect the Housing Corporation is powerless and is just in reality a government figurehead to make it look like central government is monitoring RSL’s.