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| 'Poor doors': not the worst thing about social housing | 'Poor doors': not the worst thing about social housing |
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| "We are not snobs," declares a prim housewife on a 1930s newsreel, stiffly posed on her doorstep, flanked by windows hung with neat net curtains. "But we do not wish our streets to become a perfect bedlam." The camera pans to reveal a 7-foot-high brick wall a stone's throw from her door, built right across the street and topped with iron spikes. It was installed in 1943 by the residents of a North Oxford estate to protect their homes from council tenants, who had recently moved into houses nearby as the result of slum clearance. The Cutteslowe walls were deemed illegal and finally demolished in 1959, but their descendants live on in new segregated communities, with their separate entrances and divided facilities, as a Guardian investigation revealed this week. | |
| This divisive tendency is now embodied in its most extreme form in London's slick developments on the City fringe, such as One Commercial Street, a glassy behemoth near Aldgate that has already been nominated for the Carbuncle Cup, the award for the ugliest building of the year. Here, in a modern-day reenactment of North Oxford's apartheid wall, the entrance for lower-income tenants is banished to an alley near the bins, while residents of the luxury private units enjoy a marble-lined, concierge-tended lobby at the front. | This divisive tendency is now embodied in its most extreme form in London's slick developments on the City fringe, such as One Commercial Street, a glassy behemoth near Aldgate that has already been nominated for the Carbuncle Cup, the award for the ugliest building of the year. Here, in a modern-day reenactment of North Oxford's apartheid wall, the entrance for lower-income tenants is banished to an alley near the bins, while residents of the luxury private units enjoy a marble-lined, concierge-tended lobby at the front. |
| Such things are not new, nor should they be surprising, given the Faustian pact of current housing provision, in which so-called "affordable" homes can only be provided as a byproduct of private development, a token bounty creamed off the fat of developers' profits. But the long-established practice of providing separate entrances has only now whipped up a tide of popular outrage, thanks to a catchy American coinage – the "poor door" – something New York mayor Bill de Blasio last week declared should be outlawed. | Such things are not new, nor should they be surprising, given the Faustian pact of current housing provision, in which so-called "affordable" homes can only be provided as a byproduct of private development, a token bounty creamed off the fat of developers' profits. But the long-established practice of providing separate entrances has only now whipped up a tide of popular outrage, thanks to a catchy American coinage – the "poor door" – something New York mayor Bill de Blasio last week declared should be outlawed. |
| This phenomenon has evolved in mixed-tenure housing blocks for a number of reasons. Like the snobs of 1930s Oxford, penthouse owners don't want their lobbies to become a perfect bedlam. In fact, they would prefer never to encounter their lesser tenant-neighbours. But the issue repeated by developers, architects, planners and social landlords alike, is one of pure practicality. | This phenomenon has evolved in mixed-tenure housing blocks for a number of reasons. Like the snobs of 1930s Oxford, penthouse owners don't want their lobbies to become a perfect bedlam. In fact, they would prefer never to encounter their lesser tenant-neighbours. But the issue repeated by developers, architects, planners and social landlords alike, is one of pure practicality. |
| "Registered social housing providers always want separate entrances," says Robert Evans, a director of Argent, the developer currently building 2,000 homes in King's Cross, 40% of which will be classified as affordable. "They want to manage their own units, and feel they can get better maintenance and cleaning contracts with an economy of scale, when all the units are accessed off one core." Evans stresses the homes in King's Cross are all "tenure blind", meaning you shouldn't be able to tell the difference between private and affordable units, and have equal entrance arrangements. But he admits the problems come with incorporating mixed tenure homes in luxury schemes. "The difficulty is with the higher-end product in central London, which come with an astronomical service charge," he says. "Housing benefit won't cover that, and if you try to make the private buyers pay for it, that would last two seconds in a tribunal. It's illegal to make one group of residents cross-subsidise another." | "Registered social housing providers always want separate entrances," says Robert Evans, a director of Argent, the developer currently building 2,000 homes in King's Cross, 40% of which will be classified as affordable. "They want to manage their own units, and feel they can get better maintenance and cleaning contracts with an economy of scale, when all the units are accessed off one core." Evans stresses the homes in King's Cross are all "tenure blind", meaning you shouldn't be able to tell the difference between private and affordable units, and have equal entrance arrangements. But he admits the problems come with incorporating mixed tenure homes in luxury schemes. "The difficulty is with the higher-end product in central London, which come with an astronomical service charge," he says. "Housing benefit won't cover that, and if you try to make the private buyers pay for it, that would last two seconds in a tribunal. It's illegal to make one group of residents cross-subsidise another." |
| While the builders of London's teetering silos of foreign investment continue to banish their token affordable units to the worst corners of their sites – or deliver them off-site, usually in less desirable areas – some architects working directly with local authorities are optimistic that the "poor door" tide is already turning. "You always used to see the affordable units dumped on the northern side of the block, next to the busy roads or railway lines, with poor access to light," says Paul Karakusevic of Karakusevic Carson, a practice currently engaged in building more than 3,000 homes for several London boroughs. "But that's never been our experience working with local authorities. In our work on the Colville estate in Hackney, it's the social units that have the big balconies facing south over the park – and the mayor's Housing Design Guide [which specifies minimum space standards for affordable homes] now means that the social units are often more generous than the private-market flats." | While the builders of London's teetering silos of foreign investment continue to banish their token affordable units to the worst corners of their sites – or deliver them off-site, usually in less desirable areas – some architects working directly with local authorities are optimistic that the "poor door" tide is already turning. "You always used to see the affordable units dumped on the northern side of the block, next to the busy roads or railway lines, with poor access to light," says Paul Karakusevic of Karakusevic Carson, a practice currently engaged in building more than 3,000 homes for several London boroughs. "But that's never been our experience working with local authorities. In our work on the Colville estate in Hackney, it's the social units that have the big balconies facing south over the park – and the mayor's Housing Design Guide [which specifies minimum space standards for affordable homes] now means that the social units are often more generous than the private-market flats." |
| While this new (if small) wave of public sector-led housing is an improvement on what has been squeezed out of private developers, it nonetheless falls foul of the vicious logic of "affordable" provision. Ever since the coalition government slashed the social housing grant by 60% after coming into power, the onus has been on local authorities to maximise the value of market units at all costs, in order to wring out as much public benefit as possible through labyrinthine Section 106 agreements. If a private flat that doesn't share facilities with social tenants can be sold for a higher price, well, that's a sorry compromise most boroughs are willing to take if it means a higher contribution towards affordable homes. | While this new (if small) wave of public sector-led housing is an improvement on what has been squeezed out of private developers, it nonetheless falls foul of the vicious logic of "affordable" provision. Ever since the coalition government slashed the social housing grant by 60% after coming into power, the onus has been on local authorities to maximise the value of market units at all costs, in order to wring out as much public benefit as possible through labyrinthine Section 106 agreements. If a private flat that doesn't share facilities with social tenants can be sold for a higher price, well, that's a sorry compromise most boroughs are willing to take if it means a higher contribution towards affordable homes. |
| "Of course these so-called 'poor doors' are shocking, but they are a symptom, not the problem," says Michael Edwards, senior lecturer at the Bartlett school of planning at UCL. "We've simply stopped building proper social housing, and until that's addressed then fiddling around with front-door arrangements is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." | "Of course these so-called 'poor doors' are shocking, but they are a symptom, not the problem," says Michael Edwards, senior lecturer at the Bartlett school of planning at UCL. "We've simply stopped building proper social housing, and until that's addressed then fiddling around with front-door arrangements is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." |