Scottish Monitoring Group on Housing and Homelessness

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This letter was sent to the Inverness Courier  in response to a letter from Glasgow Housing Association’s Chair, Sandra Forsythe

 

The Editor

Inverness Courier

Friday, 13 October 2006

 

Dear Sir,

The letter, written by GHA Limited’s spin-doctors and published by your paper under the name of Sandra Forsythe* is disingenuous and grossly misleading.

 Housing transfer was sold to the tenants of Glasgow on promises of ‘Tenant Control’ and ‘Community Ownership’ – GHA was designed to be a single purpose transitional vehicle but has rapidly transformed itself into a monolithic, bureaucratic monster, under the control of a CEO who, uniquely in Scotland, sits on and dominates the board and is paid much more than the prime minister for doing so!  

 Unlike all Scottish housing associations, ordinary  tenants cannot become members of GHA, although they can become members of their ‘Local Housing Organisations’.  These consultative bodies have no finance, own no property, employ no staff, exercise no power and exist simply to rubberstamp GHA decisions.

 The promised ‘Second Stage Transfer’ to the local community recedes, as barrier after barrier is erected by GHA, which paid only £25 million for 82 thousand houses, over 200 shops and three thousand lock-ups and yet demanded £35 million for one small local tranche of houses.  In addition to vastly inflated prices GHA seeks to tie local associations to contracts to provide all services indefinitely.

GHA’s approach to ‘asset management’ is perverse – instead of ensuring all properties are wind and watertight, removing asbestos, replacing old wiring, improving water supplies and other essential work – GHA has indeed put in new kitchens and bathrooms to some properties, often installing these on damp walls, under leaking roofs!  GHA has refused to invest in district heating schemes, preferring cheap-to-supply, outmoded gas systems or worse still, expensive-to-run, electric heating.  This in a city with record levels of fuel poverty!

Having been relieved of the burden of historic housing debt and provided with a £300 million interest free loan from the Scottish Executive, GHA also paid out some £15 million to arrange loan facilities of £725 million from banks. This was supposed to be invested in early years to upgrade the stock but this loan has not been used and GHA has consistently under spent and carried forward surpluses year on year.  

 GHA’s overheads consume some 49 percent of its rental income and it has a larger legal department than does the council – it needs that to aggressively pursue both tenants and RtB owners through the courts -including the most recent case against an 83 year old pensioner!

At the time of transfer GHA proposed to demolish fewer than eleven thousand houses – that demolition figure now stands at 21 thousand houses, with a further eleven thousand houses still, after nearly four years, ‘under review’.  GHA has plans to build only 3,000 houses – eventually - but to date has built none!  The houses ‘still under review’ or to be demolished, mostly multi-storey blocks, are not receiving investment and as the demolition timetable is very vague, thousands of families will continue to live in ever deteriorating damp, unhealthy conditions for many years to come.

Tenants in Edinburgh and now Stirling have seen the Glasgow experience of housing stock transfer and voted overwhelmingly against this ‘quangoisation’.  Hopefully the tenants in Highlands will not be fooled!

 

Signed:

Colin Deans, GHA tenant, (ex-elected board member GHA Ltd and GHAM Ltd)

(Cllr) Billy McAllister, GHA tenant, ex board member GHA Ltd.

Sam Harper, GHA tenant, ex chair GHA Ltd.