The gradual demolition of the Wornington Green housing estate in North Kensington, London, should be good news for residents such as Nadia.
The elevator in her 1970s building is often out of order, she complains, and the housing association does not respond to pleas for repairs until at least the third call.
What is more, Nadia and other residents have been promised accommodation in the sleek new development already taking shape on its grounds. It has a fashionable name — Portobello Square — and banners and billboards tout its green spaces and stylish amenities.
But Nadia, who has lived at Wornington with her husband and children since 1997 — not long after she arrived from Sudan — is wary. She suspects that Portobello and similar “regeneration” schemes under way across London are actually a ploy to expel the poor and make way for the rich.
“This neighbourhood is going to change,” she said, as she strolled with her daughter, Mariah, a university student. “It will be less black and ethnic minorities and more empty flats.”
The fire at the nearby Grenfell Tower, in which 80 people have been confirmed dead, exposed the neglect suffered by the impoverished residents of London’s wealthiest borough. In the aftermath of that disaster, many complained of lax safety standards and shoddy management.
They also fumed about regeneration — a policy that is supposed to improve housing conditions but is increasingly blamed for squeezing the poor out of their own neighbourhoods.
Regeneration sounds like a sensible concept: knocking down old and tired housing estates and replacing them with larger, denser developments that feature a mixture of affordable and luxury flats. The latter carry the cost of the former, which is particularly appealing at a time when government budgets are tight.
The idea has been championed in various forms by both Labour and Conservative governments as a way to fund new homes in a city that is desperate for them.
It has gained particular momentum in recent years as property prices have surged across the capital and austerity has strained public finances. Last year, David Cameron, the then prime minister, pledged to demolish nearly 100 “sink” estates as part of an anti-poverty blitz.
But critics say regeneration is misguided. New developments tear the fabric of longstanding communities. After residents are “decanted” — developer-speak for removed — they can spend years in temporary housing, often outside the borough, while they await new accommodation. Older residents may never see it.
“All over London, tenants have been displaced by regeneration schemes,” said Anne Power, a social policy professor at the London School of Economics, who began working on housing issues in 1968 after her own home was allocated for demolition.
The concept is seductive to councils, she argues, because they can cash in on the property boom by selling land to developers while, at the same time, washing their hands of the responsibility of maintaining ageing estates.
But as developers run into higher costs and delays, they often petition to reduce the affordable component of their projects.
In 2015, members of the London Assembly found that the regeneration of 50 estates over the preceding 10 years had led to a net loss of 8,000 socially rented homes. This depletion took place even as the total number of homes on the sites almost doubled.
“I don’t see how you can make it work,” said Prof Power, who instead advocates more refurbishment and better management of existing estates. “It’s the wrong model.”
Adam Challis, head of UK residential research at JLL, the property agency, was more measured but still critical. “This is one of those areas where there are some brilliant principles and really sensible ideas that are incredibly difficult to implement in practice,” he said.
Emma Dent Coad, a Labour councillor before becoming Kensington’s MP in June, has for years railed against regeneration, taking particular aim at Wornington Green and its owner, Catalyst Housing, documenting instances of shoddy construction, bland architecture and insensitivity to residents.
“Regeneration is an aim not a process,” she wrote in one blog. In another, she despaired that a cash-hungry council had turned itself into a property developer — the Royal Brokers of Kensington and Chelsea.
Catalyst defended the Wornington regeneration, in spite of some early building hiccups. “Portobello Square is a fantastic looking scheme and we are very proud of it,” said Tom Titherington, its executive director of property and growth.
Of a thousand planned units, 538 will be available for social rent — the same as the original estate. Catalyst has pledged that tenants’ net rent will not rise — although it acknowledges that service charges may.
Such assurances have failed to put Nadia at ease. So far, 97 households have opted to move off the estate permanently
Still, Mr Titherington said: “The feedback is that people are very happy with their new homes.”
Catalyst is a non-profit housing association. But architects, consultants and construction companies are profiting from regeneration. Countryside, a home builder that specialises in the practice, has seen its shares rise 48 per cent since its 2016 IPO, giving it a market capitalisation of £1.5bn.
About half of Countryside’s business involves redeveloping public sector land. It said late last year that “estate regeneration opportunities in London [are] expanding significantly as local authorities seek to monetise their assets and improve their housing stock”.
So many property investors have flooded in that “regen” has become its own asset class. Among them is the insurer Legal & General, which announced a £15bn regeneration fund two years ago. Bill Hughes, head of the company’s property and infrastructure division, promised in April this year: “Sustainable regeneration, not opportunistic gentrification.”
Part of the suspicion surrounding regeneration stems from the prolonged decline of public housing in Britain. At its peak in 1979, homes rented from local councils in England numbered 5.2m, or 29 per cent of all housing, according to official figures.
By 2016 they amounted to 1.6m homes, or 6.8 per cent. Much of it was lost under the right-to-buy policy that was a cornerstone of the Margaret Thatcher era, which allowed tenants to buy their council homes at a discount.
New housing was never built to replace what was lost. Along the way, social housing has increasingly become the refuge of society’s poorest and most vulnerable. That tends to make such properties even more of a burden to manage, giving local councils greater incentive to let them run down and then sell them to developers.
The temptation is particularly great in Kensington and Chelsea, where an influx of foreign buyers has helped make property among the most expensive on the planet.
With a backlog of residents seeking social housing, the Conservative-dominated council has taken to housing them in other, less expensive boroughs on the outskirts of London.
“I don’t blame them for thinking they’re second-class citizens,” said Linda Wade, a Liberal Democrat member of the council. Some of her constituents, said Ms Wade, have been living in temporary accommodation outside the borough for as long as nine years.
Rock Feilding-Mellen, the former Conservative councillor for housing and regeneration, did not respond to a request for comment. But in an interview with the Guardian in late 2015 he expressed his determination to provide housing for all income levels: “We’re very passionate about preserving mixed income neighbourhoods. To achieve that, you have to have housing options all the way through.”
Mr Feilding-Mellen also defended regeneration, saying: “We need revenue. I think we should be working in partnership with developers and with investors to get the most out of our land, because that money gets re-churned into protecting our frontline services.”
On the ground, though, the issue is visceral and complicated. When the borough’s plans to bulldoze Wornington leaked in 2007, angry residents of the estate’s oldest black of flats, Pepler House, declared their own independent republic.
Lawrence Lynch standing in front of Pepler House © Joshua Chaffin
The low-rise building was praised in architectural journals after it was opened in 1965 — with Prince Philip in attendance — replacing a Victorian slum known as “the Ladies”.
Lawrence Lynch moved into Pepler in 1971, and is fond of it. But he complains the building is still freezing in the winter in spite of efforts to improve the insulation.
He is less sentimental about the mazelike and rubbish-strewn blocks just across the street, which came a decade later and whose aesthetics would compare unfavourably with many prisons. “Anyone who wants to stay there should be silly,” Mr Lynch said. “They’re just an eyesore.”
Asked if he had any misgivings about private money mingling with public housing, he replied: “Who else will fund it?”