Inside Housing is reporting that pathfinders are leaving plots empty as private builders can no longer afford to build. Professor Parkinson has also found that the residential schemes promoted by pathfinder have been the hardest hit by the economic downturn.
The reason for this is quite obvious for those of us who have been sat in the middle of pathfinder developments. Most pathfinders are not built on genuine community engagement. Instead they have been developer led based on speculation and the housing has too expensive for local people. In other words the discredited "housing for investment" model. In Gateshead the populist cry is "family homes" yet building projects have ended up with homes that cost 10 times more than the average salary. Hardly a sustainable position.
Professor David Byrne of Durham University recently addressed the residents association and confirmed this grim view stating that pathfinder was really designed to help small areas of Manchester and had no role in Saltwell and Bensham.
Link
0 comments:
Post a Comment