What is Community-led Housing? Proposal for a Co-operative Housing Development

open accessWhat is ‘community-led housing’? The phrase is used these days with increasing frequency, but what does it mean? How can it embrace the resource and advice hub set up by the London Mayor to build more affordable housing, and which has just been allocated £38 million of funds, and, at the same time, proposals made by campaigners trying to save the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Lewisham, which has been condemned to demolition and redevelopment by a council and housing association acting with the financial support and planning permission of the same London Mayor? Beyond its rhetoric of government decentralisation and resident empowerment, what does ‘community-led’ mean in practice? Is it an initiative by London communities in response to the threat to their homes of estate demolition schemes implemented by councils in which they no longer have any trust? Is it emblematic of the kind of initiative envisaged by the former Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, in his image of a Big Society that takes back responsibility for housing UK citizens from the state and places it in the hands of entrepreneurs, whether small developers or housing co-operatives? Is it a way to relieve London councils of the responsibility for housing their constituents? Is it just another term in the increasingly duplicitous lexicon of Greater London Authority housing policies designed to hand public land and funds over to private developers and investors under the guise of being ‘community-led’? Or is it a genuine, if limited, solution to London’s crisis of housing affordability, one that will finally build and manage at least some of the homes in which Londoners can afford to live? In this article we address these questions through looking at ‘Brixton Gardens’, a proposal for a co-operative housing development that was made last year by Architects for Social Housing in partnership with the Brixton Housing Co-operative

The Costs of Estate Regeneration: A Report by Architects for Social Housing

open accessOne of the biggest problems faced by residents informed that their estate is being considered for ‘regeneration’ is the disinformation they are given by the local authority or housing association implementing the process. This is compounded by the council officers who run the unelected Resident Engagement Panels and Steering Groups formed to persuade resident representatives of the benefits of regeneration; by the professional consultants employed to manufacture resident consensus for what they have been told will happen; by the architects who visualise the promises of what regeneration will means for residents; and ultimately by the property developers who will build the new development. For whatever residents are initially told about ‘regeneration’, on estates built on London’s lucrative land, this invariably means the demolition of the existing estate, the redevelopment of new properties at greatly increased densities, and the privatisation of the management and maintenance of the new development. This problem of disinformation, however, isn’t confined to residents. Housing campaigners trying to resist the demolition of residents’ homes, as well as the journalists who occasionally write about their campaigns, share the same misunderstandings about the costs of estate ‘regeneration’. As a result, such campaigns of resistance are almost entirely confined to ethical arguments about the right of the estate community to continue to exist. These arguments are important, but they are of no concern to the agents of regeneration: either to the developers after the land residents’ homes are built on, or to the council undertaking the process of moving them off it. The registered social landlord, whether local authority or housing association, will make gestures of appeasement towards those rights right up to the moment residents are forcibly evicted from their homes; but those arguments will have little or no influence on what gets built on the land cleared of the demolished homes. What determines that is one thing, and one thing only: the financial costs of demolishing and redeveloping estates. It is important, therefore, that residents and campaigners understand these costs, and can base their resistance to the estate regeneration programme that is clearing the land for London’s property boom not only on arguments about ethics, but on a clear understanding of what will result from the continued demolition of the city’s housing estates in the middle of a crisis of housing affordability. The financial figures show that, if an estate regeneration scheme begins by demolishing the existing estate – which is current policy for London’s Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat councils, the Greater London Authority and the UK Government – the cost of demolition, compensation for leaseholders and tenants and the construction of new-build dwellings is so high in today’s housing market that the resulting redevelopment will overwhelmingly be made up of properties for private sale, with a hugely reduced number of homes for social rent, increased rental and service charges for existing council tenants, and enormously increased sale prices and reduced tenancy rights for leaseholders. It is on the basis of this understanding that over the past three years Architects for Social Housing has developed its design alternatives to estate demolition for five London estates, including the Knight’s Walk and Central Hill estates in Lambeth, the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates in Hammersmith and Fulham, and the Northwold estate in Hackney. These design proposals increased the housing capacity on the estate by between 35 and 50 per cent without demolishing a single existing home. In addition, the funds raised from the market sale and rent of around half of the new builds meant the other half were able to be allocated as homes for social rent. Finally, the sale and rent revenues from the new builds generated the funds to refurbish and improve the current estate up to the Decent Homes Standard and higher. The ASH model of estate regeneration through refurbishment and infill new development is easily the most socially beneficial and environmentally sustainable option to address the crisis of housing affordability in London; but it is also the only financial option that doesn’t result in the social cleansing of existing residents from their estate and the mass loss of homes for social rent that is being implemented by the estate regeneration programme in its current form

New Homes and Improvements without Demolition

This report was the result of 9 months of research and resident engagement on West Kensington and Gibbs Green EstatesThis report was produced in collaboration with ASH (Architects for Social Housing) for West Kensington and Gibbs Green Community Homes as part of their People's plan, and formed part of their business case for their application for the Right to Transfer the estates into community ownership

A New Proof Of Borel’S Lemma In Two Dimensions

Existence of solutions for nonlinear problems can often be established by a Newton's scheme, near an approximate solution, combined with a regularization procedure. This article provides a new method of constructing an infinite order $C^\infty$ approximate solution for proving Borel’s Lemma, without using the usual $C^\infty$ cut-off functions

High temperature LSI

Integrated injection logic (1,2) technology for reliable operation under a -55 C to +300 C, temperature range is discussed. Experimental measurements indicate that an 80 mv signal swing is available at 300 C with 100 micro A injection current per gate. In addition, modeling results predict how large gate fan-ins can decrease the maximum thermal operational limits. These operational limits and the longterm reliability factors associated with device metallization are evaluated via specialized test mask

Geopoetry: Greenwich Peninsula

This text, with the accompanying images projected, was performed at the conference on ³The Mediated City² held at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication on the Greenwich Peninsula, London, between April 1 and 3, 2014. The performance was given on April 2. The following day, the Geopoetry Reading it introduced was conducted around Greenwich Peninsula. The main contents of this reading can be found in The Sorcerer¹s Apprentice, nos 68­69 (2014). Available online: https://thesorcerersapprenticeonline. files.wordpress.com/2014/04/no-68-69-greenwich-peninsula.pdf/. A second performance was given on the final day of ³Real Estates,² a six-week conference and exhibition organized by Fugitive Images at Peer Gallery in Hoxton, London, February 18­March 28, 2015. Available online: http://real-estates.info/

Effects of Cacna1c Haploinsufficiency and Environmental Impact on Spatial Learning, Cognitive Flexibility and Social Behavior in Rats

Mental disorders affect a great number of people worldwide and are highly debilitating. While genetic and environmental influences are thought to contribute to their etiology, the exact mechanisms are still poorly understood. The psychiatric risk gene CACNA1C codes for the α1c subunit of voltage-gated calcium channels and has been associated with major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders in genome-wide association studies and was further implicated by clinical studies and those using genetically altered mice. In an effort to elucidate how CACNA1C interacts with environmental influences to confer disorder risk, this dissertation used a newly developed constitutive Cacna1c heterozygous rat model to examine male and female animals in paradigms aimed at cognitive abilities and social behavior, both of which frequently found dysfunctional in neuropsychiatric disorders. In Study I and II, sex-specific effects of Cacna1c haploinsufficiency were discovered on rough-and-tumble play, emission of ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) and behavioral reactions in the USV playback paradigm, indicative of altered salience coding for social stimuli and reduced incentive value of pro-social interactions. For Study III, male and female rats were subjected to spatial learning and relearning on the radial arm maze, as well as to novel object recognition. The same paradigms were applied in Study IV, in which animals were previously exposed to four weeks of either post-weaning social isolation, standard housing or social and physical enrichment during the critical juvenile developmental period. Compared to the prominent social deficits in Study I and II, intact spatial and reversal learning abilities were seen in Cacna1c heterozygous animals with initial perseverative tendencies in males. Enrichment had an overall positive effect on learning and cognitive flexibility, whereas social isolation caused a profound impairment in object recognition, regardless of genotype. Furthermore, deficits observed in heterozygous animals under standard housing conditions were rescued by enriched rearing conditions, in the sense of a gene x environment interaction. Together, this dissertation adds to the growing body of evidence suggesting that a variation in Cacna1c genotype is causally involved in social and cognitive dysfunction as core phenotypes of various neuropsychiatric disorders, yet that individuals harboring genetic risk may benefit from early intervention and positive environmental influence

Palliative care in dementia: does it work?

The topic of palliative care in dementia has attracted increasing interest in recent years. Entering palliative+care+dementia into PubMed yields only 10 papers before 1990, the first from 1982. In contrast, there have been 100 or so papers in each of the last three years. The question we have set in this editorial is deliberately ambiguous. ‘Does it work?’ can be either a question about effectiveness in practice or a question about the concept of palliative care as applied to dementia and, in this regard, it’s a question as to how palliative care fits in with the journey of dementia and the other models of care that may be relevant. Conceptual In relation to dementia, palliative care could cover a huge range from the whole course of dementia from diagnosis onwards to a much narrower focus on end-of-life care. And maybe there are points in between, e.g. as a person passes from ‘living well with dementia’ to the next stage, which might be regarded as that of inexorable decline. Van der Steen et al [1] have attempted to create clearer boundaries for what we mean by ‘palliative care’ in dementia. They used a Delphi process to generate a set of core domains and then tested these on a wider international panel of experts. Most of these domains achieved consensus: the two which did not were about the importance of palliative care in relation to the stage of dementia and to provision of artificial nutrition and hydration. The first of these concerns reflected disagreement as to whether all dementia care should be relabelled as palliative care [2]. Another issue for palliative dementia care is that it has to compete with other terms that belong to other frameworks. Palliative care has a fairly simple conceptual basis (we allege) in that in the absence of a cure, health professionals should concentrate on relieving troublesome symptoms and avoiding unnecessary, potentially harmful, interventions. It has noble Classical roots – primum non nocere – that probably go back to Hippocrates. It is closely associated with ‘end of life care’ or ‘care of the dying’ which has similar sentiments but is perhaps more closely associated with the relief of pain and bringing comfort and solace. End of life care implies a clinical milieu, even if this happens to be the person’s own home. The prevailing paradigm in dementia, however, is person-centred care, which derives from the work of Kitwood and the Bradford group. By contrast to palliative care, this arises from a reaction to the medicalisation of dementia and uses social psychology to draw attention to the perspective of the person with dementia and how the actions of those around them can shape behaviour. This model has been highly attractive for the public, the voluntary sector, and workers and academics with a psychosocial bent. It is clear how person-centred care is applicable across the whole pathway of dementia. It has enabled the voice of people with dementia to be heard, so that we now have the remarkable growth of a disability movement within dementia, with bloggers, activists, and groups such as Dementia Alliance International (http://www.dementiaallianceinternational.org/). Expect further changes in the future as people living with dementia demand their rights, equality and full citizenship. Empirical Universal acceptance of palliative care in dementia would be easier if there was good research evidence that it delivers better outcomes than other forms of care. This is more difficult to test than it appears at first sight, for at least two good reasons. The first of these is that, if we take the view that all dementia care is palliative care, any trial of palliative care might need to be across the whole pathway of dementia. This is unfeasible given the length of time that such a trial would have to run, not to mention some of the methodological issues as to what outcomes are desirable and at what points in the course of the dementia they should be ascertained. The second problem is that it is customary in studies of psychosocial interventions in dementia to compare the treatment of interest with ‘usual care’. However, this is difficult too. Is palliative care an ‘intervention’? And what is ‘usual care’? And does it not already have a palliative quality? Thus, it is probably impossible to test empirically whether palliative care ‘works’ as a form of dementia care across the whole pathway. In practice, we duck this question by talking about a palliative care approach but it isn’t established whether this adds anything to what we already do. Palliative care can be tested if specific aspects of management, usually towards the end of life, are being evaluated. For example, it is perfectly possible to compare the outcomes of artificial nutrition with not providing it, in terms of survival, pain, quality of life and so on (see Sampson et al [3] for a review). Although, note that either arm of this trial can be regarded as palliative care so, even if one arm does better, this doesn’t tell us if palliative care is effective. It is simply a judgement between two palliative care options. Conclusion Applying the term palliative care in dementia has some attractions and this accounts for the expansion of recent interest. However, it is a slippery concept to use as there is no agreement as to when it is best applied to dementia and there is no evidence that any thus-labelled intervention has improved outcomes. Furthermore, this may not even be an empirical question, in which case it is either a moral question (‘how do we wish to end our lives?’) or one of popular taste. So far, the discourse has been confined to professionals and experts and the voice of people with dementia is missing. ‘Palliative’ may be too clinical a word for their taste