They crop up even when they shouldn't: '...on LinkedIn the sole director of People First Housing describes his main job as being an “asset manager at Criterion Capital"' is a very funny line
It's absolutely horrendous that we pay such people out of there public purse at all. Publicly funded, tennant managed property, maintained for future generations is the only reasonable, logical response.
We need a proper national conversation about how we protect people from extreme heat during the summer. This is an egregious, albeit somewhat unusual, example because the air conditioning system had already been installed but the managing agents turned off the units for the affected flats. However, it points to a much wider issue of the many households with no air conditioning or cooling system at all.
At the moment, the planning system pushes people towards grossly inefficient workarounds. That includes monoblock portable air conditioning units, which use significantly more energy than proper split systems and, perhaps even more concerningly in a city like London, mains-water cooled systems, which can consume huge quantities of clean drinking water on hot days, potentially well over 1,000 litres for a small flat.
If people aren't given better options, they will continue to use worse ones and the outcome will be far higher energy use and huge amounts of wasted water.
What I don't understand about this story is, if the residents would still have to pay the electricity costs as per one example, what reason the provider/landlord/whomever would specifically turn it off anyway? It would make sense to me if the provider was also responsible for paying electricity and so simply didn't want to pay any more than the minimum.
The Guardian article mentions people could pay for the air conditioning with a standing charge. Is that just the people who aren't temporary homeless? Unclear
And no doubt if local authorities do stop sending temporary accommodation folks to the building, Criterion Capital will be delighted as they will then have evicted all the people they never wanted in the first place, as they tried to do elsewhere.
They evicted the previous tennants to use as temporary accommodation because it is more lucrative. So councils outcompeting workers to live a one minute walk from a tube station in Zone 3 and who then have to subsidise through taxation the people they were replaced with.
I’m not saying it’s correct, but doesn’t stuff like this happen all the time for the subsidised tenants in private buildings: separate entrances, amenities, etc?
Also, although I don’t agree with it, I could understand why the landlord might want a separate entrance for temporary accommodation tenants. If you were paying full whack you might decide you would prefer that. But it wouldn’t affect you in the slightest if temporary accommodation tenants could use the aircon in their flats.
Why am I not surpised at the names that appear in this article? Why do they keep coming up time and time again?
They crop up even when they shouldn't: '...on LinkedIn the sole director of People First Housing describes his main job as being an “asset manager at Criterion Capital"' is a very funny line
It’s absolutely horrendous what this man and his companies continue to be allowed to get away with
It's absolutely horrendous that we pay such people out of there public purse at all. Publicly funded, tennant managed property, maintained for future generations is the only reasonable, logical response.
We need a proper national conversation about how we protect people from extreme heat during the summer. This is an egregious, albeit somewhat unusual, example because the air conditioning system had already been installed but the managing agents turned off the units for the affected flats. However, it points to a much wider issue of the many households with no air conditioning or cooling system at all.
At the moment, the planning system pushes people towards grossly inefficient workarounds. That includes monoblock portable air conditioning units, which use significantly more energy than proper split systems and, perhaps even more concerningly in a city like London, mains-water cooled systems, which can consume huge quantities of clean drinking water on hot days, potentially well over 1,000 litres for a small flat.
If people aren't given better options, they will continue to use worse ones and the outcome will be far higher energy use and huge amounts of wasted water.
What I don't understand about this story is, if the residents would still have to pay the electricity costs as per one example, what reason the provider/landlord/whomever would specifically turn it off anyway? It would make sense to me if the provider was also responsible for paying electricity and so simply didn't want to pay any more than the minimum.
The external units only have so much capacity, I'd imagine they're hitting the limits when everyone is using their AC and this is their 'solution'.
The Guardian article mentions people could pay for the air conditioning with a standing charge. Is that just the people who aren't temporary homeless? Unclear
And no doubt if local authorities do stop sending temporary accommodation folks to the building, Criterion Capital will be delighted as they will then have evicted all the people they never wanted in the first place, as they tried to do elsewhere.
They evicted the previous tennants to use as temporary accommodation because it is more lucrative. So councils outcompeting workers to live a one minute walk from a tube station in Zone 3 and who then have to subsidise through taxation the people they were replaced with.
I’m not saying it’s correct, but doesn’t stuff like this happen all the time for the subsidised tenants in private buildings: separate entrances, amenities, etc?
I would say most of those aren’t a danger to health, though. Stopping the air conditioning working in a 30C+ degree flat definitely is.
Also, although I don’t agree with it, I could understand why the landlord might want a separate entrance for temporary accommodation tenants. If you were paying full whack you might decide you would prefer that. But it wouldn’t affect you in the slightest if temporary accommodation tenants could use the aircon in their flats.