We got left behind.

hamiltonhill.wordpress.com

Hamiltonhill Action Group Programme

* No to forcing people out of their homes. Yes to investment.

* A dry warm home for all.

* A safe, secure community.

* Facilities for children and families must be kept and improved.

* Our homes and our surroundings should be a pleasant place to be.

* Our rents must be affordable, for all of us.

* This is our community. We demand respect!

 

Action Group Escalates Campaign

Having publicised their situation throughout and beyond Glasgow, Hamiltonhill Action Group have now gained the support of the Scottish Tenants Organisation as well as neighbouring estates giving further signs of solidarity and support. The Action Group are holding a weekly stall immediately outside GHA headquarters and have made contact with several other resident’s groups in Glasgow. There have also been a large number of unaffiliated social housing residents coming up to the stall to share stories and generally showing GHA that Glasgow is supporting the campaign for better social housing, whether it is in Possil, Parkhead or Pollokshields.

 

“For the right to live without fear” ; Hamiltonhill Residents Demand Some Respect

“For the right to live without fear”

Hamiltonhill demands secure entry steel doors for its closes.

“i am very frightened as a single female living with my dog [...] i’m
frightened of what will happen next. my car was deemed economically
unsalvageable [...]  I do not have the freedom i used to have and the
self-knowing that i have my car, my time machine!! i am stuck in the
house all the time with a dog that needs to release her built up
energy, and its not fair on either of us as i’ve been told if i ever
have my car back in the street or ANY car, the junkies will destroy
it.  I was told this to my face and recently was put in hospital by
this person” (from an email to the Action Group)

In a recent survey conducted by the Hamiltonhill Action Group 25 of
the areas 50 or so close doors were found to have been broken into and
in need of repair.

 

Apology demanded after housing group charges fees totalling up to £21m

[From the Sunday Herald]

HUNDREDS OF furious homeowners are demanding a full refund and “unqualified” apology from Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) this weekend after it emerged the landlord had been charging them undisclosed fees for home improvements.

The Glasgow Homeowners Campaign (GHC) made the discovery after the social landlord supplied homeowners with itemised bills for repairs for the first time last month. The campaigners claim GHA wilfully misled them over the cost of its city-wide home improvement programme by “hiding” a 6% management fee and a 3% contingency fee in the homeowners’ original estimates, which only listed roofing, rendering and VAT charges. Based on average bills ranging from £7000-£14,000 across 26,000 properties, these fees amount to a total cost to homeowners of between £11 million and £21m.

 

Why do we call the GHA a ’social landlord’?

GLASGOW RESIDENTS LIVING IN FUEL POVERTY RISING DRAMATICALLY

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/display.var.2464399.0.105_000_city_families_in_fuel_poverty.php

AROUND 105,000 Glasgow families face a miserable winter because they cannot afford to heat their homes, a report says.

Earlier this year city councillors were told around 72,000 families did not have enough money to pay heating bills.

Tomorrow the council’s executive committee will be told that number is believed to have soared by another 33,000 due to two recent substantial fuel bill increases.

GHA – THE COUNTRY’S BIGGEST ” SOCIAL ” LANDLORD – RAISING RENTS BY 6%

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/display.var.2464426.0.rent_rise_for_city_tenants.php

THOUSANDS of Glasgow Housing Association tenants are facing a 6% rent hike.

Bosses say the proposed increase would kick in in January, a year after rents rose by more than 5%.

The board of Scotland’s biggest social housing landlord will meet tomorrow to set its annual rent strategy for 2009.

An agreement which transferred Glasgow council houses to the GHA sets rent at no more than the Retail Price Index – the main measure of inflation in the UK – plus 1%. The 6% rise would be based on the current RPI of 5%. It means a family paying £300 a month rent would pay £318.

 

The Clyde Gateway: A New Urban Frontier

[Originally Published here in Variant Magazine]

By Neil Gray

“Not only does ‘urban regeneration’ represent the next wave of gentrification, planned and financed on an unprecedented scale, but the victory of this language in anesthetizing our critical understanding of gentrification in Europe represents a considerable ideological victory for neo-liberal visions of the city.” Neil Smith¹

“The Clyde is now one of the largest and most visionary renewal projects being undertaken in Europe. I believe that this is only the beginning of this tartan tiger’s awakening.” Stephen Purcell, Glasgow City Council leader²

Glasgow’s urban regeneration converges most symbolically around the £5.6 billion Clyde Waterfront project to transform 13 miles of the Clyde river corridor into an “…internationally competitive ‘central belt’ for business, employment, living and tourism.”³ The Clyde Gateway project, an ancillary development situated in the east of the city, is deemed a vital part of this broader long term project to re-brand and transform Glasgow’s image from that of recalcitrant ‘Red Clydeside’ into that of consumerist ‘Glasgow: Scotland with Style’. The scale of the Clyde Gateway project – which includes the site for the 2014 Commonwealth Games – is enormous: Stewart Maxwell, the minister for Communities and Sport, recently described the development as: “The biggest regeneration programme in Scotland.”⁴

City boosters have been quick to point to poverty, deprivation and dereliction in the east of Glasgow to legitimise large-scale regeneration. They argue that the Clyde Gateway initiative will ensure the provision of jobs and housing, the remediation and reclamation of contaminated land, and bring wider benefits to the local and national economy. Above all, they argue that the project is essential to ensure Glasgow’s ‘edge’ in the competitive global economy. Yet, the over-arching reality is that urban regeneration has for some time been writ large as a global urban strategy of gentrification and capitalist accumulation. The disjuncture between the triumphal neo-liberal ideology of the city – of successful self-regulating markets achieving optimally balanced economic growth – and the everyday reality of uneven development, intensifying inequality, and generalized social insecurity is ever increasing.

 

Fountainwell

Reposted from a comment made on this blog:-

I attended the demolition of 2-4 [Eagle Heights] & 16-18 [Barony Heights] Fountainwell Place, in the wee small hours of the morning on Sunday 13th July 2008. Huntingdon Square had camera crews with hard hats standing by to record the event, together with a large trailer to feed them. The local indiginous youth hung about the old Templeton’s corner looking down into the Place.
2-4 [St.Rollox Heights] Fountainwell Terrace was lit up at the rear revealing the demolition crews cabins. I beleive they will stay here whilst they butcher 6-8 Fountainwell Square (anyone know its heights name? was it Huntingdon Heights?)
The Terrace and 37-49 [Tennant Heights] Fountainwell Avenue will be the last of the group of 5 to be demolished.
Up till now I thought that Pinkston had been saved but a conversation with one of the demolition guys assured me that this was not the case and that the whole lot will be down within 2 years.
As someone who moved out of Sighthill 22 years ago I suppose i am a bit of a hypocrite for moaning about this demolition but I honestly thought they’d be there forever.
Ever memory I have of these flats is precious and these “people” at the GHA are destroying the monuments of our youth.
I was the boy who got out his bed at 5 to 9 and still made it to school on time courtesy of the desicion to put Sighthill Primary on my front door. GHA should have been made to invest in Sighthill and not have been allowed this option. I hate to see all the shity looking, worthless pieces of crap that GHA are now cladding being allowed to stand while Sighthill is being subjected to this wanton act of terrorism. GHA are culpable as are Glasgow City Council. Between the two of them Fountainwell in the most part and Pinkston laterly have been allowed to decay to the point that they need to spend too much money on them now. Anyone else remember the cradle outside your bedroom window doing repairs as you lay in your bed during the summer? Any way, enough of this….F**k the GHA!!!! We are the people”””(of Sighthill that is)-Once from Sighthill always from Sighthill.

 

Gentrification in Glasgow (film), and May Reshuffle – Movement for Justice in El Barrio Tour

Glasgow is facing a wave of gentrification.  The following short films (the next in the housing and community series Answer Time) are being aired in advance of the May Reshuffle in Govan, a community event for all the family.  The films address the theme of gentrification in Glasgow, a theme that the series hopes to address over the coming months, to give citizens of Glasgow the information to stand up and defend their communities.

DICTIONARY DEFINITION: Merriam-Webster

Main Entry:

gen·tri·fi·ca·tion

Pronunciation:

\ˌjen-trə-fə-ˈkā-shən\

Function:

noun

Date:

1964

: the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents

The May Reshuffle features community campaigners from across the pond, Movement for Justice in El Barrio.  The group are staging a tour of the UK, to make links with communities resisting gentrification here, and to raise awareness of their community’s plight.

– – — – — – — – — – — – — – –

HARLEM MEETS SCOTLAND

“We will not be moved!” Juan Haro of “Movement for Justice in El Barrio” is taking that message from the ground-breaking Harlem community group to Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh this month, as part of a European speaking tour. The renowned Greenwich Village Voice describes the group as “the best power to the people movement in New York City.”

The members of “Movement for Justice in El Barrio” are mainly poor Mexican immigrants. Having driven their previous landlord, millionaire Mr Kessner, out of East Harlem, they are now involved in a major battlewith new landlord, UK-based multinational Dawnay Day.

Juan Haro explains : “Driven by multi-national corporations and profit-seeking landlords and facilitated by city officials, gentrification has swept New York causing the grand-scale displacement of low-income people of colour and immigrants from our communities. East Harlem is experiencing a wave of harassment, abuse and intimidation in attempts by greedy landlords to evict us from our homes in order to raise rents and increaseprofits. Movement for Justice in El Barrio is fighting back: “We Will Not be Moved!!!”

The group accuses Dawnay Day of trying to drive its tenants out of their
homes by the imposition of illegal charges. Juan says “We are organizing
on a transnational level to combat displacement in El Barrio – East

Harlem – by building a multi-nationalnetwork to go after one of our main targets, the multi-national corporation Dawnay, Day Group at their central headquarters in London and on multiple continents where they hold property.” Dawnay Day also own the prestigious Carlton Hotel on Edinburgh’s North Bridge, and hotels in Troon and Stirling as part of
Paramount Hotel Group.

Movement for Justice in El Barrio is committed to a grass-roots way of organising, stating “the struggle for justice means fighting for the liberation of women, immigrants, lesbians, people of colour, gays and the transgender community.” They are part of “The Other Campaign”, an international extra-parliamentary movement initiated by Mexican indigenous rebels the Zapatistas.

MJB are keen to make links with community groups in Scotland. At the Edinburgh meeting they are being joined by a speaker from Save Our Old Town, campaigning for community-based change in Edinburgh’s Old Town, and against the “Caltongate” development.  In Glasgow they are taking part in the May Reshuffle and Radical Bookfair, an event hosted to bring together a range of community groups, campaigners, and Govanites, aimed at building community cohesion, and a fun day out for all the family.

• MJB has been active for 3 years, and has 400 members, tenants in privately-rented housing in mainly Hispanic East Harlem. They have launched an innovative form of local democracy, “a consultation of El Barrio”, in which 1,500 local people expressed their views on which issues the movement should take up and prioritise. This led the New York Daily News to state :”It is real grass-roots democracy, and it is being practised by the immigrants who live in East Harlem.”

• Meeting: 17 May, 2-4pm, Pearce Institute, 840 – 860 Govan Road. Glasgow G51 3UU.

 

GHA Freedom of Information update

MSP bids to make GHA accountable
by Marianne Taylor

GLASGOW Housing Association will be made more open to public scrutiny if a Glasgow MSP’s bid for a new law is successful.

Glasgow MSP Robert Brown wants GHA, Scotland’s biggest social landlord, to become subject to Freedom of Information legislation, bringing it in line with other public bodies such as councils, police forces and hospitals.

 

Glasgow City Council’s response to government discussion document on housing

No comment:-

“Glasgow’s housing strategy focuses on community-led improvement and
replacement of housing in the inner and outer city, and promotion of
owner occupation to increase quality and choice, create mixed
communities, and retain and attract population. The Council also
encourages the private rented sector, which is suited to the city’s
changing demography.”

“whereas the main issue in the East and North East is the supply of
affordable housing, (although increasingly an issue in Glasgow too),
the primary issue for Glasgow remains urban regeneration, and it is
identified as such in our Local Housing Strategy.”

“It is unlikely that Glasgow City Council would itself use this option
in the foreseeable future, since the city is well provided with a
range of social landlords capable of delivering and managing high
quality development. In addition, it would be expensive for the
Council to re-establish a housing management organization.”

1100_25_01_2008_2481_report_item-6.pdf