Dundee: Tale of Two Cities

Dundee: A Tale Of Two Cities

While the city planners strive after a new image of high tech industries and executive offices, and worry about the impression that greets visitors as they cross the bridge, what of the people who actually live here – and are being forced literally to the city’s margins?

In the late sixties, the last residents of the run down tenements that then made up the Hilltown were forcibly dragged from their houses to allow the erection of the multis that were then thought to provide the answer to city planning. Now, another generation is fighting to be allowed to remain in these city centre blocks, and the blocks in Menzieshill - Dundee’s increasingly exclusive west end - as city planners push for another round of demolition. Although the buildings are very different, many of the reasons for the tenants’ resistance are the same. They do not want to face the destruction of their community. This time though, there is a further reason to worry, because the council is not building new houses. Across Dundee 1900 homes are on the Council’s current demolition list and 1300 more may soon be added. Council waiting lists are long and growing, even in the least popular districts. And if tenants are forced to turn to housing associations they will still be competing for too few houses. Last year the number of housing association houses built almost matched the numbers of council homes sold under right to buy.

Many, though not all, the threatened homes are in multis, and high-rise living doesn’t suit everyone. It would not be the first choice for most families with young children; but try telling the developers of those exclusive up-market multis on City Quay that people don’t want to live in flats – and their views aren’t as good as ours!. Our homes are generously sized compared to new houses, and, since the introduction of concierge systems, the buildings are also safe and secure. However, discussions of preferred building type are hardly relevant when almost no alternatives are being offered in the affected areas.

We have been told that the council will try to find us homes in the same areas. We have not been told that this will rarely be possible. If most of the 900 households currently in the Hilltown multis have to leave the area, where will they go and what will happen to the surrounding area – to small shops, to schools, to health centres, to bus services, to community organisations? Some of the threatened buildings are homes to 2 or 3 generations of the same families. Will they be able to stay close together?

The housing department’s case for the demolitions - hardly questioned by our elected councillors – quotes, in evidence, a consultants’ report on the city’s housing stock that none of us has been permitted to see, and it places much stress on the city’s declining population. However, its arguments do not stand up to examination. Even if Dundee’s population continues to fall as currently predicted, household sizes are also falling, so the total number of households would drop only slightly. And, unless there are major changes in Dundee’s economy, there may be no fall at all in the need for low cost housing. While, the council continues to welcome plans for more private housing in the city, the predicted population decline is used to justify the consultants’ advice that before 2008 the number of Social Rented houses should fall by 4,500 to 20,500. This fall would be largely made up of council housing, which is ‘assumed’ (with no further comment) to drop by around 4000 units to 12800.

The council has injected an element of fear by describing the threatened buildings as ‘at risk’; but what is actually ‘at risk’ in these buildings is the council’s finances. Repairing and improving the existing buildings could cost much less than building new homes – but the council is not planning any building. They already have a £115 million housing debt, and bringing houses up to new minimum standards costs money. Demolition does not solve the problem of housing standards for the tenants, but it removes it from the council’s responsibility. The population predictions are being used as an excuse to get rid of the council houses that cost the most to maintain, throwing tenants onto the privately financed housing associations and the rest of the private market. Dundee City Council has claimed that it is not pushing for stock transfer. It knows transfer is deeply unpopular with tenants who have well-founded concerns over lack of democratic control and rent and service cost rises. But, as a local trade unionist has put it, this isn’t even privatisation by the back door: it’s by the front door.

We want to see investment in regeneration, but not just in bricks and mortar. We want the regeneration of communities. When our planners look at the bridge, the question they should be asking is how many of us will be forced to cross it on our way to find the jobs and homes that our city will no longer provide? If, when we look back, we see a sparkling new waterfront of exclusive homes and offices, it will only remind us of the lack of investment where it is really needed.