Residents fight back against evictions – hear directly from Michelle Edwards:

Given a choice, estate regeneration schemes would not have been my natural topic of conversation. Now, I’m so versed in the subject that I could probably achieve academic status. ‘Gentrification.’ ‘Affordable’ housing. Social housing. Displacement. Labour-run boroughs. Investors. MIPIM. Developers and demolition. Those words are used with very great frequency and in a wide range of conversations these days.

My own journey into housing campaigning was triggered between 2010 and 2011 when Waltham Forest Council carried out a review of all its estates to “identify which required investment and intervention beyond planned maintenance and to improve the quality of the stock, deal with issues of underlying tenant dissatisfaction and to reflect council priorities to regenerate local areas and communities.” To that end, their review identified “Marlowe Road as a council estate with the highest priority in the borough for intervention.” A flawed consultation/assessment survey was carried out over five months from September 2012 – January 2013. The aforementioned was nothing more than a box ticking exercise. It is doubtful that any of the views of respondents were taken into account. The end game was likely always going to be ‘demolish and rebuild’ and the all-too-familiar social cleansing that accompanies it.

Out of sheer frustration and in order to debunk the council’s stream of untruths about the development, I pitched a column called ‘Life on the Estate’ to the Waltham Forest Echo. Since December 2016, I have written with forensic detail about the harshness of living through a regeneration project. The links are found below.

(Launch of column. Page 9)
http://walthamforestecho.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Echo-21.pdf

(Page 11)
http://walthamforestecho.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ Echo-22.pdf

(Page 10)
http://walthamforestecho.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ Issue-25.pdf

(Page 9)
http://walthamforestecho.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ Echo-29.pdf

(Page 10)
http://walthamforestecho.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/ Echo-30.pdf

(Page 14)
http://walthamforestecho.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ Echo-35.pdf

Quote of the Day: ‘Incompetence is often highly regarded
in governmental circles.’ William Wallace