I lived opposite the Heygate Estate during 2006-2007. Sandwiched between Walworth Road and New Kent Road, it has a reputation as one of the worst sink estates in London.
Despite nights spent chatting to the local homeless guy outside the petrol station which the estate backed onto, I never took the time to walk around the Heygate.
Since my departure from Elephant and Castle, the Heygate has fallen prey to a similar fate to Park Hill in Sheffield: a regeneration project that has ground to a shuddering halt. Residents were promised that they would be relocated into 16 new developments around Elephant and Castle by the end of 2009 as the estate was demolished to make way for a new shopping centre. With the deadline looming, only 6 of the sites have received planning permission and residents have been forced to move out of the area to other existing council estates in the borough. In early 2008 I went to buy a bike from a shop opposite the estate, one of the members of staff informed me that his daughter was now paying £160 a week to live in a bedsit on the estate under private ownership.
So what of the remaining 400 residents? Many are being threatened with eviction, particularly if they fail to find themselves alternative accomodation or turn down an offer of another council property, many of which are smaller and in an even worse state of disrepair. What sense of community there is, is being broken up, with the blame for problems falling squarely in the lap of those responsible for the mismanagement of the scheme.
As I walked around the site, much of it boarded up to prevent squatters, it had that familiar feel of urban wasteland. Safer because of its emptiness, I saw few people: a child riding a bike, a man talking into his mobile phone about evicting people, two men outside a garage. Empty flats, empty promises and back to fighting the same uphill battles against middle management. Residents who have lived there from the beginning and stuck there through the days when the estate was plagued by crime and drugs, who remember the community ethos of the old days and still feel it now. All wound up with nowhere to go.
Despite nights spent chatting to the local homeless guy outside the petrol station which the estate backed onto, I never took the time to walk around the Heygate.
Since my departure from Elephant and Castle, the Heygate has fallen prey to a similar fate to Park Hill in Sheffield: a regeneration project that has ground to a shuddering halt. Residents were promised that they would be relocated into 16 new developments around Elephant and Castle by the end of 2009 as the estate was demolished to make way for a new shopping centre. With the deadline looming, only 6 of the sites have received planning permission and residents have been forced to move out of the area to other existing council estates in the borough. In early 2008 I went to buy a bike from a shop opposite the estate, one of the members of staff informed me that his daughter was now paying £160 a week to live in a bedsit on the estate under private ownership.
So what of the remaining 400 residents? Many are being threatened with eviction, particularly if they fail to find themselves alternative accomodation or turn down an offer of another council property, many of which are smaller and in an even worse state of disrepair. What sense of community there is, is being broken up, with the blame for problems falling squarely in the lap of those responsible for the mismanagement of the scheme.
As I walked around the site, much of it boarded up to prevent squatters, it had that familiar feel of urban wasteland. Safer because of its emptiness, I saw few people: a child riding a bike, a man talking into his mobile phone about evicting people, two men outside a garage. Empty flats, empty promises and back to fighting the same uphill battles against middle management. Residents who have lived there from the beginning and stuck there through the days when the estate was plagued by crime and drugs, who remember the community ethos of the old days and still feel it now. All wound up with nowhere to go.
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