For this week’s edition of ‘Nimby Watch’, we’re off to a mystery site in London, where a veteran Lefty is opposing new social housing and student accommodation…
Where are we off to this week? I’m not telling you.
That seems to present a problem given the format of this column. No, we’re mixing things up a bit: this week I want to play a round of, ‘Guess the Nimbys!’ Which historic London site is it of which campaigners are saying this?
‘We think the site should be developed more sensitively, conserving the unique community, history, and buildings.’
No cheating, now.
Gosh, I don’t know. Buckingham Palace? Portobello Road? Hampstead Ponds? No, no, and no.
I do actually know this, it’s some ruins next to what used to be Archway junction. Oh. Well, you’re no fun anymore.
Jonn, we’re the same person. Well, I’m no fun anymore then. Yes, this is a complaint about a proposal to redevelop a derelict site besides North London’s answer to the Elephant & Castle roundabout, an enormous traffic interchange on the A1 that – despite being surrounded by extremely nice places like Highgate, Holloway and Dartmouth Park – manages to be completely and utterly bloody horrible.
Alright, let’s play along like I don’t already know. What’s there now? Archway Hospital opened in 1879, spent a time as a wing of the much bigger Whittington Hospital across the road, then from 1998 was jointly acquired by UCL and Middlesex University to form the Archway Campus. All its teaching and research facilities closed in 2013, though, and the venerable Peabody Trust housing association snapped it up for redevelopment. As well they might: decent sites right next to a Zone 2 station on the Northern line don’t come up very often.
So it’s the venerable Peabody Trust housing association that’s planning to redevelop it, is it? Ah, well, no, admittedly they sold it on to the market developer SevenCapital back in 2021. But the proposals that were put forward a few weeks ago would be slightly less than 50% market housing: 58 homes for social rent, 33 ‘affordable’ homes aimed for key workers and 87 homes at market rate. They’d also restore some of the original 19th-century buildings.
A private developer is offering more than 50% affordable? I know!
Hang on though, that’s only 178 homes, that doesn’t seem that many for that site. Right, yes, this is where it gets complicated. The proposal also includes a 242-room student accommodation development, in a 27-storey block.
Which the local people have welcomed with open arms? Would you believe they have not? One neighbour told the Islington Gazette: ‘The block is right on top of us. One of my neighbours said we’ll be on stage every day. It’s evil and it’s nasty’, which seems like a proportional response.
Well, if he lives literally next door then emotions will be running high. Sure, but it’s still a bit much to claim (this is a direct quote), ‘We’re not Nimbys, we’re Yimbys’, while simultaneously saying no to a housing development specifically because it will overlook your backyard.
Anyway, the local ‘we’re Yimbys, just not here’ voters can take solace from the fact the MP is on board, calling on the council to reject the proposal or mayor or government to step in.
Which constituency is this? Islington North.
Oh, right. Bingo! The MP opposing a development that would be more than 50% affordable housing is one Jeremy Corbyn.
That number only works if you don’t count the student housing. Sure, although, y’know, students need somewhere to live too. The former Labour leader’s issue is that: ‘I do not understand how the developers can reasonably expect to get approval for a development proposal which simply adds a tower block at the last stage of the development’.
If this is a complaint about process, then it feels not entirely unreasonable. Perhaps not, but it does nonetheless mean that a left-wing MP is opposing a development that would include a fair whack of social housing, simply because it would include other things too (again: giving students somewhere to live reduces pressure on market housing!), and that by doing so he’s slowing things down.
Well maybe it should be all social housing then? Okay, but… how? The market housing is not a one-for-one replacement for the social housing, it’s what’s paying for it, not to mention the cost of preserving those heritage buildings. There will be a reason Peabody sold the site on rather than develop it in-house.
Challenges of this sort won’t magically change the economics and result in better social housing: they just slow down the delivery of what housing is viable, on a site that, once again, is right beside a Tube station and has been pointlessly standing empty for 11 whole years, which is, one suspects, what a significant number of those ‘We’re not Nimbys’ campaigners actually want. We should build there! More homes are better!
A 27-storey housing block still feels quite tall, though. Yes, it’ll really ruin the ambience of Archway junction.
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