Tuesday, September 18, 2012

One Housing "defends" the indefensible

This is the 3rd recent post on Housing Association, "One Housing Group". First was in August this year in response to their plans to "Shape Communities" while at the same time slashing the pay and conditions of already low paid care and support staff.

The second was early this month about this post by Cllr Marc Francis, Tower Hamlets Labour Party, on housing blog "Red Brick" about "One Housing" going back on a deal made with residents about them having a majority on their local housing management board. This deal was in return for their support for an estate transfer.

"One Housing" have now come up with a rather silly defence of their action in this "Inside Housing" report. They attack the previous Board, Tory Cllrs and the local Labour MP and appear to claim that residents are just incapable of running housing services.

Which must be a bit of a surprise to the many successful co-operative housing organisations here and abroad. 

This is just an excuse. They could have compromised and still had an effective Residents Board but have chosen not to do so.

No wonder many attack Housing Associations as being unaccountable with poor or non existent governance, run in the interests of the senior management executives and their advisers, not ordinary residents.  This may be unfair to some but thanks to the behaviour of "One Housing" (and others) you can understand why many residents and politicians think so.

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