17
Mar
2015
By Calvin at 10:56 GMT, 10 years ago
My thanks to Hertfordshire Police for bringing my attention to the following report
Separate entrances for affordable housing tenants in luxury developments are ‘Dickensian’ and should be banned, a new report has said. The practice of separating entrances, dubbed ‘poor doors’ by opponents, has become increasingly controversial in London in recent years.
The Social Integration Commission today called on councils to refuse permission for developments which contain separate entrances. Affordable housing tenants are sometimes excluded from parts of a development, or required to use a separate door, because they do not pay the high service charge levied on people living in more expensive homes in the same scheme. The commission, set up by charity ‘The Challenge’ which seeks to promote greater social integration, said social housing should be ‘slotted in alongside privately rented properties’. In a report, it said: ‘The commission views the growing trend in London (and potentially elsewhere) for separate entrances to housing developments for the use of private and social tenants as a particularly disquieting – almost Dickensian – development. ‘“Poor doors”, installed to keep social tenants out of sight of their more affluent neighbours, are emblematic not just of a growing divide between the rich and poor but of the way in which that gulf is now being built into our physical environment. ‘The commission calls on all local authorities to ban the installation of “poor doors” and “rich gates” in their areas.’
The report does not quantify how common ‘poor doors’ are. The independent group also called on the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to require local councils to consider whether major developments would allow people from different backgrounds to mix, and reject those that do not. A Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) spokesperson said it was a ‘matter which needs careful scrutiny by local authorities at the planning application stage’.
The report can be accessed via Inside Housing http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/call-to-ban-poor-doors/7008660.article
Hear this on BBC Radio 4 also
TCPW Comment: On a trip to Seoul, South Korea, a few years ago to speak about designing out crime with a Dutch colleague of mine we were invited to view a very large modern high-rise development in the city. Space is at a premium and so high-rise is just about all that gets built there these days. What we found interesting was the fact that affordable and private owned apartments were not only accessed from the same entrance door, but the units were completely mixed up within the tower with rented homes next door to owned. The flat entrance doors were identical to each other and the differences only became apparent once you were inside the flats. The ones owned by the occupants came with higher specs for things like the kitchen units, bathroom fittings and so on, but even then the affordable homes were as good if not better than the ones people buy here in the UK. I’m sure we’ve got some lessons to learn from the Koreans, but the cultures are very different from each other, so maybe change will be a long time coming.
