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The
Other Notting Hill tells the fascinating history of the Notting Hill Housing
Trust from its launch in 1963, with a powerful advertising campaign showing
a family of six sharing a single room. The Trust was set up to buy and
renovate run-down, multi-occupied houses in an area of West London notorious
for its slum landlords, racial tensions and the worst overcrowding in
Britain. The book describes how the fledgling housing association overcame
huge hurdles to re-house families in desperate housing need, the pivotal
role it played in a huge community campaign to change the housing policies
of the local council, how it carried out an innovative and ambitious programme
of housing renewal, how it influenced national policy as the leading member
of a new generation of dynamic housing associations. It is now responsible
for almost 20,000 affordable homes across West London, including shared
equity flats for first time buyers, temporary accommodation for homeless
families and rented homes for people on low incomes.
Chris Holmes first became active with community groups in Notting Hill
in the 1960s and has almost forty years experience of work with housing
organisations, including as Director of Shelter, Director of Housing for
an inner London borough, and the director of a community-based housing
association. He is a Board member of the Housing Corporation and the Youth
Justice Board, and a Visiting Research Fellow with the Institute of Public
Policy Research (IPPR). He has written widely on housing and social justice,
and his book “A New Vision for Housing” will be published in
2005. |
