Tag • #communities

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Sadiq Khan: leaseholders in England should have the right to withhold service charges

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 10:00

London mayor says residents need a law protecting them from unfair and unexplained increases in levies by landlords

Leaseholders hit with large and unjust service charges should have the right to refuse to pay up, Sadiq Khan has said, amid concerns that the government has backed away from its promises to boost the rights of tenants .

There are 1.4m leasehold properties in London, a quarter of all such properties in the country. The London mayor said that many of the residents affected were suffering from a “shameful abuse of power” by their landlords.

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Littler India: why Britain’s south Asian garment stores are struggling

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Yesterday - 06:00

They have been resilient amid wider high street decline – but units are now emptying in areas such as Southall, west London

The south Asian high street is facing a fight for its future in Britain as customers scale back wedding celebrations because of the cost of living crisis and young people’s changing preferences.

Businesses in London and Manchester have said they have witnessed a huge decline in customers after the pandemic with the cost of living crisis prompting many to decide against the traditional big south Asian wedding and to seek out cheaper products online.

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Forced home moves cost renters over half a billion pounds a year

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 17 April - 23:01

There were 83,000 unwanted moves in England over the past 12 months, meaning 40% have been forced to relocate

Unwanted home moves cost renters over half a billion pounds a year, with tenants coughing up an average of £669 every time they are forced by landlords to leave their home, a survey has revealed.

Analysis by the homelessness charity Shelter estimated that there had been 830,000 unwanted moves in England over the past 12 months, meaning 40% of renters who move house are doing so because they have been compelled to look for other accommodation.

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‘Rat bites and chronic asthma’: schools on frontline of UK housing crisis

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 17 April - 05:00

Schools say increasing numbers of children are turning up sick because of dire housing conditions – if they turn up at all

Some children living in dire housing conditions have been woken up by chesty coughs caused by damp, others by the smell of sewage leaking down their walls. Toby* was woken by rats on his chest.

“It was midnight and he came to me crying,” said his mother, who does not want to be named. He is one of more than 3,800 children living in temporary accommodation in Lewisham, the council with the 10th highest number of children living in such housing in the UK.

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Little London: the Hampshire ‘plague village’ wary of another exodus from capital

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 15 April - 14:22

Residents say they are not nimbys but village lacks infrastructure for new homes most cannot afford

If the age-old story is correct, the Hampshire village of Little London gets its evocative name from the flight of fearful residents from the capital during the Great Plague of 1665-1666.

But today’s inhabitants are up in arms at the prospect of a 21st-century exodus from London to their tucked away settlement.

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Squatters take over Gordon Ramsay hotel and pub in London

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 13 April - 14:25

At least six people lock themselves in Grade II-listed York and Albany next to Regent’s Park and post notice

Squatters have taken over a pub in London leased by Gordon Ramsay that is up for sale with a guide price of £13m.

A group of at least six people locked themselves inside the Grade II-listed York and Albany hotel and gastropub, next to Regent’s Park, boarding up the windows and putting up a “legal warning” defending their takeover, the Sun reported.

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‘We just need a little help’: how a safe parking plan for people living in cars split a US town

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 6 April - 10:00

Sedona, Arizona, lacks affordable housing, but a program for priced-out local workers to sleep safely has drawn opposition

Jodi Jackson moved to Sedona, Arizona, last year for a slower pace of life. The 52-year-old has found the affluent town – known for its red rocks and appeal to the new age crowd – to be welcoming.

Working in a local laundromat, she comes into contact with a wide range of customers, from those cleaning linens for short-term rentals to those living in their cars.

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All hail the ‘mimbys’: the open-minded voters who might just save Labour’s housing plans | Gaby Hinsliff

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 5 April - 05:00

With millennials now a political force, Starmer should embrace the grey belt and commit to building houses, because that builds hope

There are few things most politicians hate more than a crude yes-or-no question. But when asked last autumn if he was instinctively a yimby rather than a nimby – meaning someone enthusiastically in favour of new housing in their own back yard, rather than a foot-dragging objector – for once Keir Starmer answered unflinchingly in the affirmative .

It’s rare for Labour to say an unhesitating yes to anything lately, instead of hedging that actually it’s a bit more complicated than that, or else too expensive. The plan to build 1.5m new homes in five years is both those things with knobs on and yet somehow – feel free to touch wood here – it’s one of the last genuinely big Labour ideas not to get its wings clipped.

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UK failure to build social homes ‘shocking’, says author of 2004 report

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 4 April - 13:41

Kate Barker, speaking on anniversary of landmark review, says overcrowding and temporary accommodation even worse today

The failure of governments to build enough social homes in the past 20 years is “shocking” and “uneconomical”, says the author of a landmark Blair-era report into housing supply.

Kate Barker has expressed her disappointment at the levels of overcrowding and widespread use of temporary housing resulting from a lack of new homes to accommodate some of Britain’s poorest citizens.