Date published: 2007/08/02
The Cambridge Evening News says:
Only London commuters will be able to afford flats being planned for Cambridge city centre, a local councillor has claimed.
Tariq Sadiq, who represents Coleridge on the city council, warned local residents would be priced even further out of the city, with only London workers and wealthy investors able to afford the flats.
Highland Homes want to create a 10-storey residential and retail development called Living Screens on the site of two former garages on the corner of Cherry Hinton Road and Hills Road.
The proposed development on the Marshall garage site and Shell petrol garage, opposite Cambridge Leisure park, could include up to 133 flats, shops, a cafe, residents' gym and 99 underground parking spaces.
It is thought a two-bedroom flat will go on the market for around £300,000, with 30 per cent of the scheme classed as affordable housing.
But Labour councillors say more affordable housing needs to be built - not exclusive luxury apartments.
Coun Sadiq said: "Cambridge is at crisis point. There are too many expensive flats shooting up in the city centre and the people that keep the city running - the teachers, nurses and college workers - are being forced out so London commuters and wealthy investors can buy a place in the city.
"The council isn't meeting its affordable housing targets - developers have a moral and social obligation to provide at least 40 per cent affordable housing in each development."
Jay Gort, architect for the Living Screens development, has admitted he would not be able to afford one of the flats himself.
Coun Sadiq said: "It is quite something when even the architect for the development can't afford to live there.
"If more of these developments go up, the impact on community spirit will be huge. Commuters who just sleep in a flat have no investment in the city.
"They have no reason to be a part of the community and to make an effort to make Cambridge a better place for everyone.
"The city council needs to take its responsibility to provide affordable housing seriously and should not keep sanctioning expensive flats which are totally unsuitable for families and totally unaffordable for people who are on average incomes."
Well, some of this is obvious. London commuters are going to fill much of any housing near Cambridge city centre. So housing built near the city centre is largely irrelevant for the needs of Cambridge. And unfortunately a large chunk of new housing in Cambridge consists of flats, not houses, and certainly hardly any decent family housing is being built. Unfortunately, the urban planners, the so-called environmentalists, and most of the rest of the ruling elite have all decided this is the way the world should be. So, the ordinary residents of Cambridge have to pay extra taxes so that London commuters can enjoy a subsidised train ride to work (since trains are allegedly a holier-than-holy form of transport, which of course is false), and this encourages London commuters to live further from London than they otherwise would. And on top of this London commuters earn more (on average) so can afford to pay more for housing.
On the other hand, most London commuters don't just "sleep in a flat", they move around Cambridge on evenings and weekends just like Cambridge residents do, and also, many London commuters have partners who work in Cambridge. Further, the idea that a higher percentage of "affordable" housing will make things better is dubious, at best. The only way a developer can sell some housing in a development for less is if they also sell the remaining housing for more. So the more "affordable" housing there is, the more extortionate the "non-affordable" housing needs to be, in compensation.
And the real objection to the Living Screens development is that it is too tall. The city let the Belvedere apartments get away with it, but to keep pushing taller and taller buildings further and further from the centre of the city is stupid.
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