alexist

My mother came and shamelessly monopolised Aliza all afternoon. Not that it bothers me; after all, she won't see her again until the end of May. She also changed 3 diapers without even asking, and one of them was disgusting, so I did well out of it. And she brought us dinner.

(yes--we should be visiting New York again at the end of May. Probably come Memorial Day weekend and stay 2 weeks. This time, we may even make good on our repeated vow to drive down to DC, as Neil's never been there!)

Estates: An Intimate History by Lynsey Hanley. This was very good, and interesting in a depressing way. It's just unbelievable how many mistakes have been made in British social housing. l knew about some of it, but it was still unbelievable--for example, not only were the tower blocks they built in the '60s ugly as sin and unwanted by the tenants, they were unbelievably poorly built. The collapse of Ronan Point in 1968 was because the building was basically held together by pins. Before they finally demolished it in 1984, an architect looked at it and discovered that it was literally held together by garbage. And the council actually rebuilt the collapsed section and kept tenants in it! Many of the buildings were also damp, leaky, draughty, and went to ruin within a few years. Even the architect-designed ones were failures: Park Hill will now cost £30,000 per flat to re-do and it can't be torn down because it's Grade II* listed! The Hulme Crescents had to be closed to tenants with families because a child died and Manchester council decided it was fundamentally unsafe for children. (http://www.open2.net/modernity/buildindex.htm has photos of some of these estates, though sadly not the Hulme Crescents which were particularly foul and now demolished.)

Then Thatcher struck the death knell with right to buy--the right itself was fine, but it barred councils from using the money to build more housing. So what's left in council housing is a hard core of poor people, in the worst, hardest to sell or let flats, no new housing to meet demand, and councils are reduced to paying market rent to house tenants in flats they sold off. Blair's no better with his blackmail policy ("you'll only get repairs if you vote to transfer your housing off the council"--it might be best to transfer some housing from councils, but the choice should be made fairly, not by arm-twisting tenants.)

Funnily enough, today they Grade II* listed the Byker Estate in Newcastle--which is, at least, not a concrete hulk and is a rather more interesting design, one that was developed in consultation with tenants.