‘Economic violence’: Birmingham residents denounce plan to raze 1,900 homes | Birmingham

When Laura Kudrna bought her home in Birmingham’s Ladywood neighborhood, she ended a 12-year rental period in which she had moved 20 times. “I was so happy to be able to stay in a house that I thought I would keep for the rest of my life,” she said.

But her new sense of security was shattered when she discovered her property was one of 1,900 homes listed as potentially demolished in what is believed to be one of the largest single-site regeneration projects in Europe.

The scale of the proposed scheme is staggering: 6,000 people could see their homes demolished as part of a £2.2bn scheme in which 1,266 council homes and 567 privately owned properties could be seized as part of a massive compulsory purchase order for the area.

Instead, 7,500 homes will be built as part of a high-density housing plan on a 61-hectare site. About 1,000 of them will be designated as council-owned affordable housing, according to a report to cabinet.

While the numbers may seem impressive, the strength of the opposition to the project is more than comparable. Residents have expressed fury and accused the city council of “psychological economic violence.”

The battle lines are being drawn on familiar ground. Birmingham City Council has described the move as the most significant redevelopment project in a generation, in a city where there is an urgent need for more housing. The number of people presenting themselves to the council as homeless has risen to 600 a week in the last year.

On the other side of the debate, Kudrna, 39, is leading the Ladywood Unite campaign to raise residents’ concerns about the project. They say they understand the need to increase housing stock, but not by demolishing good homes.

She said: “They seem to want to demolish good quality new homes to do this. It’s just outrageous. We are absolutely in favour of housing development. There’s a lot of building land in Ladywood, like this building that’s derelict, and this building that’s derelict,” she said, pointing to a vacant plot of land near her home. “Why can’t they just build on that land instead of attacking our homes?”

The project will be carried out in stages over a period of 15 to 20 years, and expropriation orders will only be used as a last resort, the council said.

Homeowners would be entitled to compensation and the council is exploring options to help people living on the site buy the new homes, for example through equity sharing.

The council said it intended to take a “build first approach”, meaning people would not be evicted from their homes until a new property became available locally, and would ensure no one would be forced to leave Ladywood if they did not want to.

Some have said they are skeptical that such a development will happen. George Smith, who will retire from his job as a school principal at age 60 this summer, had planned to spend his free time enjoying life in the house he bought when it was built 30 years ago.

It is in a modern, well-maintained subdivision, but it is within the red line of the proposed demolition zone and is at risk of being razed.

“I own the property. I put everything in here, it was my home for life. I never thought I would ever need to move and if I did it would be on my own terms,” he said. “That’s the real injustice of it all, and at the same time the council is totally incompetent when it comes to meeting with us.”

The renovation project has been plagued by problems for months. At a consultation meeting held by the council last year, nearly 100 residents were unable to enter a packed community centre, leading to an angry mob forming outside.

“There’s been a terrible lack of community engagement,” Kudrna said. “We’ve had a really hard time getting the council to meet with us or give us information. It’s really psychological economic violence.”

Marco di Nunzio, associate professor of urban anthropology at the University of Birmingham, studies the Ladywood regeneration project. “Birmingham is seeing a return to what was happening in the 1960s, which was razing whole areas and rebuilding them,” he says. “In the UK, there are planning laws that allow the local authority to seize properties if it is in the public interest.”

“But is the Ladywood regeneration project, in its current form, really in the public interest, if it involves the displacement of large numbers of people to make way for a commercial enterprise, without a firm and binding commitment to provide social and affordable housing?”

Ladywood has a large black and minority ethnic population (58%, compared to 51% for Birmingham as a whole) and high levels of poverty and deprivation. It has the highest rate of child poverty in the UK.

Di Nunzio said there were real fears that people would be pushed out of the area and that the upheaval would have a significant psychological impact.

“The opacity of the process, the open-mindedness that comes with losing your home, is atrocious. There’s a huge anxiety problem, there are parts of the community that are very vulnerable,” he said. “The level of injustice that you can experience really affects people’s self-esteem.”

The Labour government has outlined plans to build 1.5 million homes in its first term, and concerns have been raised across party lines that it risks ignoring community issues in the process.

Ladywood residents said they feared the push for more housing could put freehold properties at risk of demolition under similar schemes to increase housing density.

Jayne Francis, the council’s cabinet member for housing and homelessness, said: “We know that many in the Ladywood community are feeling frustrated and uncertain about what this project means for them, and we would like to apologise for any distress caused.”

She added that the only decision that had been taken was to appoint St Joseph, a subsidiary of housing company Berkeley Group, as the council’s preferred development partner.

“No further decisions have been made regarding the renovation project or which homes will or will not be demolished. The Ladywood renovation is still in the early stages of the process, and many decisions still need to be made with the community.”

Francis said the council was developing a “community and resident charter” to set out its engagement throughout the project, and a second round of engagement workshops had begun.

“We will work hard to rebuild trust with the Ladywood community and make the most of this exciting opportunity to revitalise an area that was primarily built in the 1960s,” Francis said.