Ronald remembers the estate going up in the 1930s and has now seen it partially demolished and redeveloped again.
Residents originally moved there from back-to-back inner city properties, and at the time, the new semis seemed like palaces.
But the passing years, combined with a lack of investment have not been kind to the stock. Last year the city council won a National Housing and Town Planning award for the redevelopment of the Pype Hayes estate and Ronald and other tenants were asked to help design their new homes.
And today the council is engaged in knocking down and redeveloping the 1,400 crumbling homes on the estate.
Yet to continue this success story the council, which is England's largest landlord, says it may have to transfer its entire stock of 93,000 homes in order to tackle its billion pound repair bill.
Last week Housing Today revealed that Birmingham had been looking carefully at whole stock transfer proposals from Glasgow city council - the largest social landlord in the UK (Housing Today, issue 146).
The figures are stark. As housing chairman Dennis Minnis says: "£1.3bn is needed to provide acceptable living conditions for thousands of tenants. A third of our yearly rental income of £220m goes to pay off the £678m debt we have incurred building new homes, many of them unpopular tower blocks."
Typical of the problems facing the authority, which has 300 high rise blocks, are two towers within half a mile of each other in Handsworth.
Standing by the dumped kitchen furniture outside unimproved 1960s built Devon tower, housing director Graham Farrant says: "Understandably, people don't want to live here and we only have so much funding."
Yet at nearby Hodgson tower tenant Louise Clarke says life has been good since the introduction of security cameras, 24-hour warden and concierge cover, with external and internal decorations, all aided by £37.5m in City Challenge funding.
More comprehensive improvements aimed at community regeneration have taken place at neighbouring Newtown shopping centre, where formerly just eight out of 90 units were let.
"We made it an indoor centre, put council offices next to it and even changed a swimming pool entrance so all amenities faced onto the same square, all to provide a community focus."
Police too have advised on structural work such as the removal of walkways and blocking off of alleys to combat high crime levels.
And in Erdington, the authority faces the task of raising funds to pay to extend tiny kitchens and convert upstairs bedrooms to bathrooms in 1930s terraced housing.
The preferred long term solution here is the wholesale replanning of the estate. There is chronic space shortage in some homes on the estate, which is a mix of tenants and Right to Buy owner- occupied homes, explains housing officer Lorraine Donovan.
Elsewhere in the city, housing chiefs face the problem of rundown turn-of-the-century private homes, each worth around £20,000 but requiring £5,000 of improvement to bring them up to standard.
Birmingham has around 40,000 private homes unfit for habitation.
Some of these homes have benefited from "envelope funding" - repairs which maintain the appearance of the street but don't tackle internal disrepair - but according to Farrant, occupiers tend to wait for further improvement cash rather than undertaking the maintenance themselves.
He says: "To regenerate an area you have to make it one where people want to live. A good school is a major attraction so the council is also working with education services to improve school performance."
The housing department prides itself on its flexibility in selecting suitable funding packages to bring improvement. As for transfer, Birmingham has ruled nothing out, including a vast whole stock transfer. At a recent behind-closed-doords meeting, Farrant and Minnis sounded out unions' views on whole stock transfer amongst other options.
Minnis explains: "We are prepared to do what ever is necessary to bring improvement. Tenants will be consulted on the changes they want to see."
In central Birmingham, Optima Community Association was formed in June this year to regenerate more than 2,700 inner city homes using almost £50m Estates Renewal Challenge Fund money - the largest ERCF grant to date, with a further £37m loan provided by private finance.
Contractors have just begun renovations of eight tower blocks and Optima directors are out "meeting and greeting" tenants across the estate, getting an idea of their concerns and listening to their views.
This transfer of five estates was driven through by local residents who demanded a better deal for the rundown areas - holding protests and sit-ins to make their point. Could it point a way forward for the rest of Birmingham's stock?
Finance director Martin Robertson spells out the advantages: "Although the association has been developed by the council, Optima is not bound to operate in the same way."
Optima, of course, faces its own problems. A group of leaseholders are in dispute with the assocation over bills of up to £10,000 apiece that they will be faced for the improvement works. Yet Optima head of housing and community services Lesley Whiting is optimistic: "Perhaps we have shown the way on stock transfer. That it isn't the evil some people make it out to be." But being a landlord with just five areas in a limited geographical area is obviously a very different proposition from the monolithic landlord that could be formed if the city council were to go down the whole stock transfer route.
As Whiting says: "Small landlords such as Optima have the advantage of being more sensitive to the tenants' needs than large single landlords."
Whichever way forward the council chooses, one thing is for certain. The housing world will be watching with close interest as Farrant, Minnis, local unions and tenants thrash out the best option for Birmingham.
Source
Housing Today
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