Dear Mike,

I and my family we evicted from our home in Needham Road, Kensington, in November 2003 because Housing Benefit was not paid to our landlord for approximately 12 months.

The house we moved into in the same road (Private Landlord again), was sold in an auction just after we moved in, the new owners want us out so that they can put in students so as to get more money.

I was told by Liverpool Council Housing Advice Service that I would have to APPLY TO BECOME HOMELESS? And then wait to see if my application is successful, I was also told to contact Housing Associations, C7 being the local one. Michael Bowles (C7) informed me that HOMELESSNESS IS NOT A PRIORITY and their list is closed.

Other Housing Associations have told me that because of the size of my family (there are 6, myself, wife and 4 sons), that we need a four/five bedroom house and because they don’t have any we could not go on their waiting lists.

It is now 16 days since I applied to become homeless and I am still waiting to hear what the decision is, we have to be out of the property by the 19/05/04 before we end up with landlord (MGM Estates, Chester) going to court and landing us with the court costs, solicitors fees, etc.

Rgds

This guy and his wife and kids are going to be thrown out onto the street when £62m is available within his community. And the city council is responsible for his plight. Four days ago the Liverpool Echo told him that they would send a photographer out to take pictures of his family and that they would do a storey. They gave him a time and day, but mysteriously they did not come. Maybe they will eventually come who knows? One thing is certain though, this guy only has 4 weeks to go and he will be dragged out of his house by ruthless on the increase bailiffs. Who’s going to help him then? Can anyone out there help us help this guy?

Take a look at the storey below which is just a snapshot of what is going on in the New Deal community today:

EVERYTHING IS GOING WELL FOR THE NEW DEAL ADMINISTRATORS!

Well, all 36 staff and the 30 or so community cronies at the £62m Liverpool Kensington New Deal for Communities office on Wavertree Road are having a great time. According to the spin doctored “New Deal News” (a sickly full of smiling faces and sunshine events spin doctored once a month glossy mag) the community cronies and the various New Deal outreach workers are organising all sorts of stupid events. Of course these middle class oriented events were suggested by the middle class entourage of community workers who have now entrenched themselves into well-paid jobs in the New Deal community. The £62m New Deal initiative is now nearly 4 years into its 10 year span and only 30 of the most conniving idiotic residents are now involved and there are 14,000 residents living in the New Deal area.

The idiotic 25 member New Deal board of resident homeowner moderates and conniving service providers have given the go ahead for hundreds of thousands of pounds of New Deal money to be given to middle class members of the Philomonic orchestra who will tour poor working class schools in the New Deal zone and play Mozart and Bach to the working class kids, many of whom will face a dreadful future of poverty and deprivation.

Demolitions and gentrification is on the cards, which will eventually result in hundreds if not thousands of poor working class tenants being thrown out of the New Deal community and reghettoised in other poor communities which are far away from the city centre renascence, you see Kensington is right next to the city centre. You can’t have riff raff tenants in an area, which is now being made ready for a massive middle class influx, can you? Some New Deal this has worked out to be, it should have been called New Deal for the middle classes.

Already the money grabbing house builder Lovells has been given public land (yes, land that belonged to the poor people who are now going to be hoarded out of the area) to build the first phase of 179 new houses, each costing somewhere in the region of £100,000. Only 45 of these houses (much smaller and tucked away in some far off corner) will be for rent and rumour has it that they will go to demolition homeowners who don’t want to buy another house after their old house is demolished. Already rumours are circulating around the New Deal community that the Registered Social Landlord Community 7 (C7 are in reality a subsidiary of the ruthless Riverside Housing Group who own over 22,000 properties in Merseyside alone) have already bought a house off demolition homeowner and given him one of their 58 new retirement apartments which where supposed to be for tenants only. The Liverpool Echo knows about all this stuff but refuses to write about it.

WHERE IS THE LEFT WING WHILE ALL THIS INJUSTICE IS GOING ON? YES YOU GUESSED RIGHT. THEY ARE NOWHERE TO BE SEEN AND MANY OF THEM, ESPECIALLY THE MIDDLE CLASS ONES WORK FIR THESE INITIATIVES AND FOR THE REGISTERED SOCIAL LANDLORDS. NO WONDER THEY DON’T WANT TO GET INVOLVED!