The Ghosts in the Machine

The Ghosts in the Machine

“The ghosts in the machine are the occupants.  Those who buy or rent new homes are real enough, but living in ways scarcely seen, understood or researched.  Hunt the housing literature, white papers, National Planning Policy Frameworks, the pronouncements of professional bodies, think tank essays or the agendas of good-intentioned housing conferences.  The occupants are spectral figures barely regarded, rarely discussed, or, if mentioned, patronised.  They are seen only as customers by the private sector and supplicants by the public sector - either way, expected to fit rather than form the mould.”[1]

We’ve written before about our concerns at the monstrous buildings being proposed on the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) site which will completely destroy existing communities, but nothing had prepared us for what we heard at the April meeting of the Old Oak Neighbourhood Forum.

This was the experience of one of the first of the 37 tenants to move into the Notting Hill Genesis tower block, advertised as,

Beautiful unique apartments with large balconies and access to two roof terraces.

Oaklands Rise comprises of a stunning selection of two bedroom apartments available through Shared Ownership.

Here are some extracts of what we heard.

“We read the literature but we didn’t know the area and had no clue about its history. We’d never even heard of Notting Hill Genesis.  We were given false promises about a local Tesco, Starbucks, a Fitness Centre.” 

“The rent is £1,950 a month but it’s a scam – it’s a nightmare.  I wake up every morning and wonder how I am going to get through another day.  For days we had no heating or hot water.  All the flats are full of building mistakes – the quality is really shoddy and nothing gets repaired. The locks on the balcony and on the door fell off. There is mould – one flat flooded twice in two weeks.  The worst thing is nobody listens – you are just left on your own.  We were told that shops and cafes would be opening in January 2022 but there is nothing.  Notting Hill Genesis use Dexters Letting Agents to manage the block, but when we report the disrepair, they say ‘If you don’t like it you can move out’”.

There is a mix of social renting tenants and shared ownership, and one person asked whether the shared ownership flats were built to a higher standard.  “No”, the tenant said, “they are all the same, for example in one shared ownership flat the cupboards have fallen off the wall.”

[1] Broken Homes Britain’s Housing Crisis, Faults Factoids and Fixes, Petr Bill and Jackie Sadek, 2022