Housing scandal in London

Press, 14 March 1977, Page 12

Housing scandal in London

NZPA staff correspondent London A television documentary about East London’s homeless which was screened last week unearthed a scandal about the Greater London Council’s handling of the problem. And with only two months before G.L.C. elections, some Conservatives are calling for a full investigation of the Labourcontrolled council’s housing policies.

In “Goodbye Longfellow Road” — already praised as one of the best documentaries ever — a Yorkshire Television crew investigated a street of derelict houses which had been officially designated a slum for the last 50 years and in line for demolition since the 19405. With scarcely-habitable buildings as illustrations and residents as narrators, the film team accused the G.L.C. of being too lax in checking on housing conditions. Fifty-five buildings in the Longfellow Road area that were due to be demolished had been turned over, with £59,000 for renovations, to two housing charities which were to make them habitable and then sub-let them to the "desperate homeless.” In the documentary, Irene Thompson who lived in one of those buildings, gave a

guided tour of her room pointing out a roof which leaked so badly that it affected the electricity and an outside lavatory which was unusable.

The film crew followed her when she went to the council for help after a bad rainstorm ruined the wiring. She was told that they could 'not help her — she had a roof over her head and was not, technically, homeless. Eventually, an active squatters’ association in the area found her a better place that had the bonus of being rent-free. The programme also looked at another family, an invalid couple in their eighties and their devoted daughter, who had lived in the street for the last 60 years — waiting since 1974 with their bags packed to move from the damp house surrounded by demolition sites.

Last year their names, apprently forgotten for two years, w'ere rediscovered on a waiting list and they were moved. But the father, dying as they left Longfellow Road, lived only six weeks. ACCUSATIONS “Goodbye Longfellow Road” said that both the housing associations in their investigation, Second Genesis and Novo, were run by ex-Dartmoor prisoners, and it accused the charities of abusing public money and using strong-arm tactics against tenants.

The documentary said that Aiderman Paddy ' O’Connor, chairman of the G.L.C.’s

( single homeless subcommittee, had worked with both Second Genesis and Novo.

After the programme was shown — despite the G.L.C.’s last-ditch efforts to prevent the broadcast — it was reported that some G.L.C. officials had suspected months ago that all was not right with the housing charities but there had not been enough staff to investigate. The council’s controller of finance, Maurice Stonefrost, and Harry Simpson, controller of housing, have called for stricter control of monies for housing groups like Second Genesis.

And the housing spokesman said: “Yorkshire Television didn’t tell the half of it. The situation is, in fact, far worse than they have portrayed and we have known this for 18 months. I wasn’t surprised by anything I saw.”

Not only has the documentary come at a time uncomfortably near elections for Labour councillors, it has come in the midst of a debate about housing policies generally. Meanwhile, the number of [new houses and flats being I built in Britain has gone down a third since last year, land housing agencies say there are more homeless now than there were 10 years ago.