Building Communities (Routledge Revivals)

The Co-operative Way

Johnston Birchall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317703501
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Aménagement urbain et paysager

Building Communities: The Co-Operative Way, first published in 1988, sets the flourishing of housing co-operatives throughout the 1980s in a theoretical and historical framework that suggests that tenant control is the best way out of the still-problematic issue of housing policy.

Before the First World War, co-operative housing was poised to become a potent force in government policy, but instead municipal housing rose to prominence. However, alongside a growing crisis of confidence in state housing and a continued decline in the private rented sector, a new political consensus has emerged that has placed co-ops firmly at the top of the agenda. Setting out the argument for collective dweller-control of housing, Birchall demonstrates that the arguments for co-operatives are strong, based on a broad spectrum of political thought. He charts the early and recent history of co-operative housing, and shows how they provide a flexible and stable means of meeting housing needs.

ONE

HOUSING NEEDS AND CO-OPERATIVE SOLUTIONS

Coming into Birmingham New Street on the inter-city express, the traveller, if not completely preoccupied with finding a ticket and gathering luggage together, might look out beyond the waste-lands of disused railway sidings and the Saltley gas-holders, to the miles of grey slated terraces, which seem to flow like waves over the gently undulating hills, broken only by the occasional church spire. It is far from an awe-inspiring sight, especially on a drizzly day in November, when the wet roofs seem to merge with a grey sky, and the chimneys remain bleakly empty of all but the uninviting fumes of the gas fires which now burn in the homely grate. But if the traveller is an architect or a housing manager, who has been working there for several years rehabilitating the old houses the sight might well be awesome, because those waves of grey roof-lines are a reminder of just how much work has still to be done in saving the thousands of decently built but old and worn-out houses which make up so much of the English landscape. From the train, it would be impossible to pick out Mrs Mason’s roof with the slipped slates and sagging gutters, which let in that drizzle in a steady downdrip which turns the wallpaper of her front bedroom yellow, and gives the whole house a musty smell of never-quite-dried-out damp. Her elderly mother lies under mountains of blankets in her bed in the front parlour, while the cat dozes in the only really warm spot, in front of a spluttering gas fire. Faded photographs on a mantelpiece, the same colour as a stain of rising damp which lifts the wallpaper under the bay window, are the only reminder of her husband, killed on D-Day two months after Mrs Mason was married.

There is a knock at the door. Mrs M takes her apron from round her rather portly frame, runs her hands with more anxiety than deliberation through her hair, and answers it, taking care to leave the chain on guard. Standing in the drizzle is a very young man, with an attaché case under arm, and an air of self-importance. He shows her a card which explains that he works for the housing department, and, unguarding the door along with her expression, she steers him into the back living room. Before he can state his business, she has begun to pour forth about the rats in the back yards, the ‘tinkers’ who have lit fires in the empty houses, the state of the pavements, and reaching crescendo, vents a final gust on the landlord, who has not done any repairs since she moved in, in 1944. The man asks for the landlord’s name, which stops Mrs M in full flow, as she realises she does not know; the ‘agent’ has reported two recent changes in the ownership of the whole block. The council man sees his chance to divert attention from her complaints, and explains that one property developer after another has seen his chance, and then off-loaded the whole (in the parlance of this dubious profession) ‘portfolio’ on to someone with less pressing cash-flow problems. Mrs M lets this go sailing over her head, and then settles into a catalogue of complaints about the house. The young man grins, and with just a hint of malice, holds up an official looking piece of paper; it is the closing order on her ‘property’, and an offer of rehousing, at the council’s discretion, within the next three months; the whole street is earmarked for demolition.

Two months and one rehousing later, Mrs M is standing in a lift, catching her breath at the smell, and trying not to look at the obscenities on the walls. She steps out, round the dog-dirt on the landing, and scurries along to number 501, where she hurriedly lets herself in, turns two locks, bolts and chains the door, and shouts ‘Mother?’ The old lady is sitting at a window, looking down on to a wind-swept expanse of grass, a monotony broken only by a row of decapitated saplings, and two clumps of spiky shrubs which have impaled a number of passing chip papers. Her bad temper shows in the slumped cast of her bony shoulders. ‘I’ve not slept a wink for those kids, thundering up and down the landing on their bicycles. They come right past the door.’ Mrs M goes into the tiny kitchen to brew a cup of tea, and remembering the council’s rule-book which states that condensation is caused by tenants’ carelessness in cooking, washing clothes, and breathing heavily, opens the window to let the steam escape. Her clothes are already going mouldy in the built-in wardrobe. The bin-chute was blocked up the first time she tried to put the rubbish in it, and so plastic bags bulge on the kitchen floor. She has spoken once in the ten days they have been here, to a neighbour who disappeared back indoors with his milk, her greeting left suspended on the cold air. Today she has been to the supermarket on the bus. The Saturday before, she had to get two buses, into town and then out again to see her sister, who lives a few hundred yards from Mrs M’s old home. She will go there again this Saturday, if she can afford it, and again will go past her old, boarded-up house to look for the cat, which has disappeared. She hopes that this time, she will not cry quite so bitterly at the loss of her old home and all the familiar things that went with it, and that she will find the way back to the flat without losing her way.

Alternatively … there is a knock at the door. Mrs M takes her apron from round her rather portly frame, runs her hands with more anxiety than deliberation through her hair, and answers it, taking care to leave the chain on guard. Standing in the drizzle is a very young woman, carrying a briefcase. She has a business-like air, and introduces herself as a housing officer for the Saltley Church Housing Trust, which is about to buy up the entire row of houses. Mrs M shows her into the back room, but instead of launching into a tirade of complaints, contents herself with a plaintive ‘Well I hope you do better than the last landlord with the repairs; you can hardly do worse!’ She shows her the rent book, and the young woman explains that the Trust is a housing association which specialises in buying older houses all over the West Midlands, and has a programme of improvement work funded by the Housing Corporation and the local council. After Mrs M’s house is done up, she will have to pay a higher rent, but it will be a ‘fair’ one, fixed by the rent officer. Mrs M can hardly believe her luck, and offers the young woman a cup of tea. When she says that tenants can move out to another house while the work is being done, and then move back, she gets out the tin of chocolate biscuits. Later, when the rather bossy young woman has gone, Mrs M sits in the cold of the November evening, trying to imagine what it will be like; to have a new roof, an unchipped bath, a drain that does not overflow, a new floor in the back bedroom, where she had had to get her brother-in-law to put down some hardboard to stop the bed going through, new windows that can be opened and shut, and joy above measure, central heating.

Three years later, after the Trust has finally fitted the house into its improvement programme, Mrs M is helping her mother up the stairs. The Trust’s architect had had the old outdoor toilet demolished, which had served her mother well since she lost the use of her legs, and several times a day, she has to lift and push the old woman up to the white-tiled bathroom. In fact, the whole house is a sea of whiteness; brilliant white emulsioned woodchip on all the walls, kitchen fittings, radiators, hardboard doors, and on all interior and exterior paint-work. She remembers coming to see the work while in progress, taking the bus from that hideous flat they had put them in as a – what did they call it? – a decant. She had joked with the workmen about it looking like a hospital, and had asked them if they would leave the cupboard in the back living-room; it had been made by her husband Jack, just before he went off to get himself killed, and she had sort of grown used to it. After about ten minutes, when she had fed the goldfish in the pond in the back garden, and was just going up the stairs to see the new bathroom, the same young woman had rushed in, accompanied by a builder, and had told her off for trespassing. She was bustled outside, and told that while the house was ‘on site’ under no circumstances could she go inside. The questions she had been meaning to ask, about Jack’s cupboard, and could they keep the outside toilet, and would they mind not dumping rubbish in the pond, all died on her lips, and she had gone sadly back to the ‘decant’, wishing she had never allowed them to bully her into moving out.

It had been a great day when, after being decanted for six months, (they said there had been delays with the builder) she had dressed her mother and set off in the van for home. The euphoria had worn off quickly, when she found that the electricity had been turned off, and that because of a mix up with the builder, it would be put on again only when the relevant form reached head office. After three days and several phone calls to the housing association, she had finally succeeded in getting the meter man to call and put back the main fuse. Weeks later she still cannot settle. All the old familiar things have vanished; Jack’s cupboard, the old front door with its beautiful carved knocker, the leaded stained-glass window on the landing. As for the magnificent wooden fireplace from the front room, her neighbour Mr Woolley swears he saw one of the architects going off with it in the back of his car. The fish have died, the pond and garden are a mess of mud and rubble, and the privet hedge has been rooted up and replaced with a tacky little fence that will not keep a whippet out, never mind Mr Woolley’s alsatian dog. No, she cannot settle, and does not know why. She does not want to seem ungrateful, but it does not somehow feel as if it is her home any more; all the little things that made it so have gone, and her furniture and carpets look cheap and old-fashioned against the gleaming paint-work. She finds it hard to recall quite as vividly those brief few months of married life which had started here so long ago. It is as if her husband has finally left her, with all her memories slipping away. When the young woman had come to do an inspection, Mrs M had found herself complaining about a window that stuck, and about the central heating which did not seem to work. The girl had relit a light which worked the gas, and told her to read the instruction book, and she had felt stupid, which made her even more bad-tempered. She settles her mother by the new gas fire, and sits down to have a rest. And in all this brilliant whiteness, Mrs M finds herself shedding just one or two self-pitying, and she is sure quite unjustified, tears.

Alternatively … there is a knock at the door. Mrs M takes her apron from round her rather portly frame, runs her hands with more anxiety than deliberation through her hair, and answers it, taking care to leave the chain on guard. Standing in the drizzle is a very young man, with a canvas bag slung over his shoulder, and a bicycle which he has parted under the front window. He explains that he is from the Saltley Community Housing Association, which is about to buy up the whole block. He wants to discuss the possibility of improving her house after it has been bought, and to list some immediate repairs which might be needed. Mrs Mason is so taken aback that she suggests he put his bike in the hall where it will be safer, and steers him into the back living room. He explains that the housing association works from offices on the main road, next door to the law centre, and that the Housing Corporation has given them the job of buying houses just within Saltley, so as to improve them, and let them at a fair rent. Mrs M says she knows the office, because some of her friends on Adderton Road are ‘Saltley’ tenants, their houses have been done up very nicely, and yes, the rents do seem very reasonable considering all the work that has been done. The young man, who asks her to call him Bob, jots down the fact that she lives with her mother and that the roof leaks badly at the front. He explains that in order to get on with the work quickly, the association will send an architect round as soon as the houses are bought, and will then keep in touch at regular intervals to ask Mrs M about the kind of improvement she wants.

Two months later, with the sale completed, Bob calls back with a new rent book, and asks if she prefers to pay her rent weekly at the office, or have the rent collector call. She decided on the former, since it is near where she shops, and she quite fancies meeting some of her friends who are Saltley tenants to show them that she is one too. He asks if she wants a full improvement, which entails moving out to an empty house nearby, or just a part improvement, which means a new roof, windows, doors and so on, which can be done with the tenant still in the house. He strongly advises the former, because unless people are disabled or very elderly it is the best deal available. When she hears that she can have a decant house in the next street, and that the work will take about 10 weeks, she agrees; the prospect of having the roof stripped off while her mother is still in the front living room is even more harrowing than that of moving her bodily to another house. Bob also offers the possibility of a permanent move locally, saving the effort of moving twice, and Mrs M considers this, but emphatically opts for getting her own house back in the end.

Over the next few months, Bob calls back twice. The first time he jots down on a long questionnaire all the things Mrs M wants to keep in the house, such as the cupboard, the front door, the stained-glass window and the fireplaces. He notes the need to fence off the gold-fish pond from the building work, that garden fencing should only be provided where there is a gap in the privet hedge, and most important, that the elderly mother needs a downstairs toilet. Finally, he measures the kitchen cooker and washer to see that they will fit in with the architect’s drawing for the new kitchen units. The next time he comes round at about 7 o’clock at night, looking tired out, but with an architect in tow, who shows her some outline plans for the house. They are not too hard to follow, because the plans are in colour, with furniture drawn in, and she is able to point out where she wants her plug sockets. The architect listens attentively. He has learned never to under-estimate tenants, since the day when he had woken up Mr Grimshaw who was on the night-shift; Mr G had taken him in, made a pot of tea, and proceeded to draw a plan of how he wanted the house improving which involved reversing the kitchen and living-room so as to put the latter next to the park rather than the busy main road. The plan had been so good that the architect had torn up his own ideas and adopted it for all the empty houses on the street. Then just before she moves out for the building work, Mrs M is asked to go to the office and choose her wallpapers, kitchen worktop colours and vinyl tiles, from pattern books which are laid out in the interview room.

The housing association has to battle to get the Housing Corporation to agree to the downstairs toilet, but covers the costs of this and other extras by putting together several houses in one contract, and thus getting a low tender. While the house is on site, Mrs M cannot resist going past to see how it is going, and when one day she sees Bob and the architect there, they invite her in to look round. Inside it is like a skeleton with all the flesh removed, old timber floor joists and wiring hanging like worn-out bones and sinews, but with new plasterwork and stud partitioning going up to patch and strengthen the old frame, and new windows like fresh eyes from which to see the familiar old street. While she is upstairs, she checks that the bedroom doorway will leave space for her big double bed and wardrobe. The architect makes a note to have the eventual doorway moved slightly over from where it is on the plan. It will cost no more, and in any case he agrees it gives a better layout for bedroom furniture. On the move back, the new house seems strange but also in some ways the same. The builder has left the front door and living-room cupboard, but given them a new coat of paint, and the garden is virtually untouched. She looks eagerly to see how her choice of wallpaper and kitchen worktops will blend in with the new carpet she has bought, and which was laid yesterday before the move in. The builder has had the electric and gas put on already, and she only has to have it transferred into her name. That afternoon, a housing assistant calls to show her how to use the central heating, and how to light the pilot light if it goes out. Some of the windows are a bit sticky, and one of the worktops seems loose, but Bob has asked her to report any faults at the office. She cannot wait to see her friends and compare notes about the various improvements they have had done. The only worry she has now, is about who her new neighbours will be, who will occupy the empty houses in the street.

One final alternative … there is a knock at the door. Mrs M takes her apron from round her rather portly frame, runs her hands with more anxiety than deliberation through her hair, and answers it, taking care to leave the chain on guard. Standing in the drizzle is a middle-aged man who she recognises immediately. He is Jim Holyoake from the local residents’ association, and he says that some of the private tenants in the area are thinking about forming a housing co-op, to buy out the landlords with a view to doing up the houses and keeping them in proper order. Mrs M asks him in, and after saying a brief hello to the old lady in the front room, he settles himself by the back room fire and explains what the idea is about. It seems that without waiting for the council or a housing association to get round to doing something about the dreadful state of all the Bradford Estates properties, of which there are about 75 locally, the tenants can get together, form a co-operative housing association, buy the houses and improve them with Housing Corporation or council money. They would then let them to themselves at a reasonable rent, and do all their own allocations, which means they could choose their neigbours, use some of the rent money to do environmental improvements, pressurise the council into doing the pavements, and so on. All this is too much for Mrs M. She cannot see how a tenant can be a landlord, paying rents one minute and spending them the next, nor how the council would actually provide them with the money to buy their own homes. Mr G patiently explains that while individual members of the co-op would still be tenants, they would own and control the houses collectively as the landlord. The next question from Mrs M is the usual one, of how a group of ordinary people could deal with all the difficult jobs which only the ‘educated’ could understand; Mr G is ready with the answer, that they would hire their own architect, solicitor and co-op worker, who would do all the negotiating, oversee the building work and so on. All that the tenants have to do is to organise themselves.

Over the next two years, Mrs M becomes very busy. She had not thought that she had any skills to offer, but has been elected as minute secretary to the committee and general meeting, which meet alternate fortnights. She has dusted down her old type-writer, has relearned to type and is secretly studying shorthand. Her social life is as busy; she bakes for the regular buffets which follow some of the general meetings at the local church hall, and is on the Co-op’s social committee. The back living-room had been used for a while as a temporary office, by the young woman who had been seconded as development worker from the West Midlands Secondary Co-op which had taken the fledgling Saltley Housing Co-op under its wing. Since the Co-op office has opened above the law centre, things have been quieter, but the architect who is overseeing the first phase of the building work has taken to dropping in for a cup of tea and a quick use of the phone. Now that she is not so busy, Mrs M gets a friend to pop in to look after mother, while she goes to Age Concern meetings; a new branch has just been opened, and is run mainly by Co-op members and people from the local church.

Good housing remains the priority though, and the wait for the building work to begin has been a long and sometimes frustrating one, with delay after delay experienced in a bewildering ‘snakes and ladders’ game, in which the Co-op had climbed one ladder at each stage of the bureaucratic funding system, only to slip down a snake when trying to buy houses at a higher cost than allowed, or trying to get approvals for schemes which turned out to be over cost-limits. For instance, she had been depressed when, after all the work she had put into making the Co-op a success, the Corporation had objected to the downstairs toilets she and a neighbour felt they needed; at a stormy meeting the members had insisted on fighting the issue, and by designating the two houses as ‘old persons’ dwellings’, had got their way, and had also added some electric ‘help’ signs which were to be put above the front door.

Having been consulted by the Co-op’s development sub-committee, Mrs M knows that her house will be improved soon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD BY MICHAEL YOUNG
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 HOUSING NEEDS AND CO-OPERATIVE SOLUTIONS
• 2 HUMAN NATURE AND CO-OPERATIVE VALUES
• 3 DEMOCRACY, THE STATE AND CO-OPERATIVE WELFARE
• 4 CO-OPERATIVE HOUSING IN BRITAIN: THE EARLY STAGES
• 5 CO-OPERATIVE HOUSING IN BRITAIN: THE LATER STAGES
• 6 CO-OPERATION IN PRACTICE: SIX CASE HISTORIES
• 7 A FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATION
• CONCLUSION A CO-OPERATIVE VIEW OF HOUSING POLICY IN BRITAIN
• NOTES
• SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX