“overlooked and discriminated against”
After reading Cllr O’Halloran’s statement marking her first year as leader of the council I feel really overlooked and discriminated against, and I know that amongst the borough’s leaseholders I am far from alone in this.
Cllr O’Halloran says in her statement that housing is “a daily issue” for the residents she serves. As someone who has always lived on an Islington council estate I am a champion of social housing and welcome the buyback scheme as a way of increasing council housing stock, but only if the leaseholder genuinely wants to sell and is not being bullied or forced out of their homes by extortionate major works bills. These are sometimes as high as £100,000, amounts no average-waged person or OAP could ever dream of paying without incurring considerable debt.
An Islington Council employee has confirmed to me that most of the homes the council buys back are sold because the leaseholders can’t afford these huge bills.
Leaseholders are among the residents Cllr O’Halloran serves, and the number of them that have to leave the community they have lived in for years is surely a housing issue, yet she shows no empathy, understanding or even awareness of their plight.
She has the power to change policy and give the leaseholder a much longer period to pay the money back interest free, an improvement on the inadequate 5 years that now applies.
Council tenants pay for their share of major works with increased rents, but over a much longer time. Us leaseholders ask for fairness and equality, and a change of council policy to help us sleep at night.
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