Why are so many plush new homes bought for Grenfell victims STILL empty?
Roger Allen is a 70-yearold former soldier who is still coming to terms with the grenfell Tower fire disaster from which he narrowly escaped and in which 71 of his neighbours perished.
For 41 years, until that horrific night of June 14, he lived alone in a low-level housing block near the tower called grenfell Walk and was woken at 1.30 am by three ‘lads’ who banged on his door and told him to ‘get out quick’.
Mr Allen obeyed. He walked out of his door leaving his possessions behind and was not allowed back.
His flat, like others in grenfell Walk, was so damaged by smoke and debris that it was uninhabitable, even though the fire did not actually reach the block.
Today, the pensioner is in a new abode, after a stay of more than five months at a hotel paid for by the royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which owns the burned-out tower.
He has just moved into a one-bed flat in a new block of 24 apartments and seven townhouses called The Hortensia on the King’s road in Chelsea — a fashionable area of the capital full of wine bars, clubs and shops.
He says he will never forget the horrors of that dreadful night when so many people died.
last month, after an exhaustive inquiry, Scotland Yard announced that 71 people lost their lives. The figure was far below some of the estimates put about in the immediate aftermath. For weeks previously, there had been febrile claims that the local council and the government were suppressing the true scale of the tragedy.
In all, 208 households — amounting to many hundreds of people, although the council will not say exactly how many — lost their homes. The trauma they suffered is, to the rest of us, unimaginable. Parents lost sons and daughters; children their mothers or fathers. neighbours perished. experts said the disaster triggered a mental health crisis on an ‘unprecedented’ scale, and more than 457 adults were diagnosed with post-trauamatic stress disorder as a result of the blaze.
on top of this, their homes and possessions were destroyed. It is hardly surprising, then, that the question of rehousing victims is such an emotive issue.
For his part, Mr Allen is delighted with his ‘all mod-cons’ new home. ‘I like it here,’ he told the Mail. The only quibble is that the over-sensitive fire monitor goes off at the smallest trigger — such as when he grills two strips of bacon. ‘I have asked the council to get it fixed, but their people are so busy at the moment.’
Mr Allen, who has lung disease, was given the flat by the council as a priority because of his illness. After the grenfell fire, the council bought all 31 Hortensia properties from the developer, who had built them on a former car park.
They had originally been earmarked for both private and affordable rented housing, but now they will all go to grenfell survivors.
Many of the flats are still empty, though. When we spoke to Mr Allen two weeks ago, he said that only ‘four or five’ people had moved in.
Yesterday, a full-time concierge at the entrance to the building said more had arrived since, but around one-third of the flats are still empty, as well as a number of townhouses.
I asked one of the new residents, 45-year-old Salah, a British Somalian who lived in grenfell with his four children, why there were still so many vacant flats and houses.
‘People won’t make up their minds,’ he said. ‘They say yes to the council, and then they say no.
‘I don’t understand it because I would hate to be in a hotel again. We lived in one in Fulham from the time of the fire until october this year. It was terrible for the children.’
Salah said that some of the townhouses did not have enough windows and that had put some people off: ‘There is one here, near to me, that no one will ever take because of the way it is designed without light.’
This week, it emerged that four out of five families who lost their homes in the grenfell blaze may spend Christmas and even new Year in temporary accommodation.
OF THE 208 households who lost their homes, 42 have moved into permanent new housing provided by the council, while a further 82 have accepted offers of new homes but are yet to move.
More than 100 households remain in emergency accommodation, mostly hotels, although some are staying in housing rented for them by the council and others are with family or friends.
Many of the fire’s victims have accused the council of treating them with an ‘ unacceptable’ lack of compassion, and of breaking promises that all of them would be re-housed by Christmas.
Shahin Sadafi, chairman of the survivors’ group grenfell United, said this week: ‘At this rate, it could take the council almost two years to re-home people. no one can start to rebuild their lives until they are in a place they can call home. It’s been six months now.’
So where does the blame lie for the homeless of the grenfell Tower fire?
According to council leader elizabeth Campbell, the council has committed the entirety of its cash reserves — a quarter of a billion pounds — to deal with the tragedy and provide housing for survivors.
In addition to the 31 homes at The Hortensia, Kensington and Chelsea Council has acquired a mixture of 68 one, two and three-bedroom newbuild flats in Kensington row, a £ 2 billion complex 1.7 miles from the tower. It has also bought six homes in Tavistock Crescent, less than half a mile from the grenfell site.
All of these are ready for people to move into, and the council says it expects to procure others soon from the private market, as well as in top- quality ‘council and housing association’ properties.
But why is it taking so long to fill these homes? A council spokesman explained the process of finding suitable accommodation was inevitably slow. There was ‘an element’ of people wanting to stay in an area of london they know, he said, adding: ‘ These people are making life changing decisions, and we will work at their pace.’
When I visited Kensington row, a block of flats with balconies and gardens, one former grenfell resident who has moved in told me it was ‘almost empty’.
An ESTATE agent selling properties on the open market in the private blocks on the site confirmed this.
I spoke to an elegant South American woman in her 30s who told me that she and her four children escaped the fire at 3.30 am. She did not want to be named but explained that most people wanted to be rehoused somewhere nearer to the tower.
‘They want to stay near grenfell, an area they know, and where they have friends and family,’ she said.
For her part, she had only lived in grenfell for 18 months and says ‘the place never touched my heart’. Certainly, she adds, she never wants to go back there.
‘The flat here is lovely, although the children are still at school over at grenfell and have to travel there every day. I do hope others decide to move in here soon.’
It may be that most of the available homes in Kensington row have now been offered to grenfell victims who are yet to move in or are still deliberating. The council will not say.
Certainly, some people are taking their time to decide precisely where they move to.
An Italian, Antonio roncolato, told BBC2’s newsnight recently that he preferred to stay with his 26-year-old son Chris in the four-star Copthorne Hotel in Kensington rather than take up the council’s initial offer of a permanent apartment in Westminster, four-and-a-half miles from grenfell, or one in earl’s Court, two-and-a-half miles away.
Mr roncolato, who works as a barman in a hotel in the South Kensington area and had lived on the tenth floor of grenfell Tower since 1990, said: ‘I declined the Westminster one because it was not in my borough. The second one was a basement flat in earl’s Court near a very busy road. That also was not suiting my needs.’
When asked what would be acceptable, he said: ‘Acceptable would be a two-bedroom flat on the second, third, fourth, fifth floor, with a lift. I want it in an area possibly where I work, near where my relatives are.’
Yesterday, Mr roncolato said he’d applied for a home in Hortensia road or Kensington row ‘ but nothing happened’.
He has explained: ‘It might sound like people are getting a bit fussy, but they have been through so much and if you’re moving house, you want it to be to somewhere you will stay for a lifetime.’
Mr roncolato’s son Chris — who was deeply traumatised because he not only lost a close friend in the fire but was outside watching the block burn while his father was inside — has accepted the offer of a
one-bedroom flat in the Fulham Road area where he will live temporarily until a permanent home becomes available.
For his part, Mr Roncolato is very happy. ‘I’m still in the hotel but eventually my time will come.’ His hope is that, eventually, he and his son will be allocated a suitable flat each.
Then there is Randa, 25, who is living in a hotel in Gloucester Road, West London, with her husband, who has been in Britain for nearly two decades, and their two children aged six and three. A few days after fleeing their flat, they moved into the hotel and have been there ever since.
I met her as she got out of a taxi which she uses to take and collect the children from their primary school in the shadow of Grenfell Tower, two-and-a-half miles across London. The £50-a- day taxis are paid for by Kensington council.
Randa’s mother, here on a monthlong visit from the Yemen, is staying in a block of £100-a-night tourist apartments near her hotel. The council arranged her trip here on compassionate grounds, although it is unclear whether the borough is paying towards it.
Randa, who speaks perfect English, says the authorities are ‘doing their best’ for her family. She hopes to get a place in The Hortensia block in Chelsea.
‘We have applied for a flat there and now are waiting to hear from the council,’ she told me.
The council has a housing waiting list of 2,700 households, but the Grenfell victims are — understandably — getting special help. The council says the quarter of a billion pounds set aside to cope with the tragedy is still ‘not enough to deal with a disaster of this magnitude’. This explains why, in his recent Budget, Chancellor Philip Hammond announced an extra £28 million to support the survivors.
Details of the grants available are published on the Grenfell website page of North Kensington Law Centre, whose lawyers have been acting for victims and negotiating with the Government and the council to get money for them.
GRANTS include a weekly food allowance of £300 a head for every adult and child over five years of age (and £150 for under-fives) in hotel accommodation. Each household affected by the fire is entitled to an initial payment of £5,000 with a further cash payment of £500 per individual who permanently lost their home.
In addition, there will be a interim payment of £12,500 to each household from Grenfell Tower to cover loss of home contents; each household will receive a further £2,500 per child for up to two children — meaning that for each household’s loss of contents, ‘ the maximum that can be claimed is £17,500’.
Residents do not have to provide any evidence for this and receive the payment irrespective of whether or not they had contents insurance.
The council has also put aside around £16.5 million to buy permanent homes for the 17 leaseholders who had bought flats destroyed or made uninhabitable in the Tower or in Grenfell Walk.
Other tenants will have rent, utility bill and council tax holidays until summer 2019 after they move into either temporary lets or permanent new accommodation.
No one should begrudge what is being given by the council to the traumatised survivors. It should go some small way to alleviating the shocking sudden loss they suffered and the anguish of seeing scores of people die.
The authorities are trying to help all the victims, even if they were living there illegally.
‘Grenfell was home to council tenants, private renters, homeowners, sub-tenants and to many people from other countries including migrants and asylum seekers,’ says the organisation Radical Housing Network. ‘ The council has a responsibility to all these people.’
The authorities have said that Grenfell residents who were living in Britain illegally have been given an amnesty against being either prosecuted or deported, and offered the chance to stay here permanently. And those who were illegally sub-letting flats at the time of the fire will not be prosecuted.
This brings up the awkward subject of how much sub-letting was going on. And, if so, will any of those who rented from the council and then sub-let their flats get the new housing and generous state help on offer?
Such issues are now being discussed on social media.
For example, an Australian girl who was living on the tenth floor of Grenfell Tower, but escaped alive, was said to be sub-letting from a ‘landlord’ she had never met who is thought to have been a council tenant.
A friend of the girl, who has since returned to Australia, asked: ‘Will these so-called “landlords” claim all the financial help being offered, and start letting their council flats again in new properties?
‘How can this be prevented? I would hate to think he could benefit from being given a new property and all the financial aid.’
Well before the fire occurred, the council offloaded the running of the tower to the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO).
Residents bombarded it with complaints about Grenfell, claiming it was breaching its duty of care to them, failing to carry out repairs and warning of the risk of fire.
In November 2016, the Grenfell Action Group, formed by worried residents, warned of ‘dangerous living conditions’, saying: ‘ It is truly terrifying . . . but we firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO.’
It was against this background of concern that the disaster took place.
Now it can only be hoped that those who need help get it. Yet it seems there are still more questions than answers about this tragedy as families continue to struggle to rebuild their lives.