Having examined a unitary area, Wandsworth, the interviewing of senior
representatives at four agencies for private tenants took place; Kensington Private
Tenants Rights Project, Hammersmith Private Tenants Rights Project, Camden
Federation of Private Tenants and Brent Private Tenants Rights Project. Questions
were also levelled at squatters groups, protesters and other ‘dissenters’ in order to get
a rounded picture of the processes going on.
These organisations were more useful in facilitating a better understanding of the
nature of displacement whereas the local authority had provided a more adequate
picture of gentrification. This quite clearly stems from the ‘location’ of the
organisations examined in relation to these processes. The raison d’etre of these
organisations stems from a need to deal with the high levels of problems that private
tenants experience in inner London.
Transcripts for all of the interviews are provided in appendix E. The results of the
interviews with the tenant’s rights workers (TRWs) have been divided into three key
areas;
- i) a closer examination of the subject of gentrification itself
- ii) the identification of reasons for displacement of tenants and what happens to
displacees
iii) the wider impacts of the gentrification process in terms of its costs and effects to
areas where it has occurred
- i) Gentrification
While displacement stemming from gentrification was the focal point of the research a
number of additional points emerged from the interviews which had a bearing on both
the previous census methodology and the conceptualisation of the process. The
Locational factors are perhaps the most easily understood aspect to the gentrification
process. In speaking to a number of estate agents in the north of Kensington it was
quite clear that in addition to a cultural element surrounding the Portobello Road area
factors such as the proximity of the central line tube were critical in allowing City
workers looking for a ‘fun area’ to live in. In combination with the large bonuses paid
to City workers properties were deemed easily affordable by an increasing number of
such occupational groups who eagerly sought properties in the area. A particular
boom was being experienced at the top end of the market, that is, in the million pound
and above bracket.
Location is also clearly contingent on other factors such as price and availability so
that some areas appear to become popular either when saturation of an area like
Islington had taken place or the supply of cheap small flats had been exhausted. In
Hammersmith the main factor appeared to be location and a number of other factors;
“It might also be the style of the properties as well, the architecture because I
don’t think that Fulham is wildly well served for public transport or anything
like that…once you had got past the smaller properties of Islington going people,
professionals classes, became interested in places like Hackney which would
have been much cheaper but I think that they were starting to look to the Fulham
area – and there was a lot of development on the river”
The reasons for gentrification appeared similar to those alluded to in the literature and
at the local authority level. In an area like Kensington it was clear that a variety of
fairly obvious locational factors accounted for the desirability of the area;
“your just around the corner from Harrods, just around the corner from the West
End and the central line. Its Hyde park, posh hotels, posh restaurants, its
Knightsbridge, Mayfair, all of those kind of things that you would sort of
associate with people with huge pots of money. Its ‘popping down to Harvey
Nic’s darling’, you know its as simple as that.”
In Camden the market area clearly provided a focus for younger people who were now
finding it more difficult, through price and availability, to find accommodation. This
lack of available and affordable accommodation was having the, now familiar, effect
of leading people who wanted to be in Camden to look in neighbouring Kentish town
and was increasing prices there. The youthful profile of people trying to enter the area
led the TRW to make a distinction between gentrification and the ‘trendification’ of
Camden.
In Kensington a fundamental distinction was apparent between the kind of
gentrification found in the north compared to that of the south. This was phrased in
the following terms;
“The north gentrifiers are the usual gentrifiers, middle classes and wanting to go
into homeownership, places that are often not in terribly good condition, doing
them up making them into luxurious type homes. There have been some moves
of the sort of ‘Sloanes’ who have moved there as well, probably because this
area has become even out of their reaches. The south has been gentrified…by
people with absolutely ridiculous amounts of money, a lot of them are not
British by birth, are not naturalised in this country at all, don’t live here most of
the time”
The absence of these groups during the best part of the year meant that they would be
undetectable by the use of census data which may have accounted for the apparent
lack of gentrification in the south of the borough when using this data.
It is clear that these groups have had as strong, if not a stronger, impact on the local
housing market than the domestic gentrifier. What is clearly at issue is whether the
class of gentrifiers is the main identifying factor for a process of gentrification. It may
well be that gentrification is actually losing much of its class character. If this may
seem academically unacceptable it should be noted that the breakdown of the linkage
between higher classes and more wealth may mean that a process of gentrification is
breaking down into one of ‘incomisation’, as the fundamental displacement dynamic.
Where class still seems to refer to modes of consumption, money is cutting across
class cleavages so that the class gentrification debate obfuscates the true underlying
dynamic of the process.
Transport infrastructure may perhaps remain one of the most important factors for
gentrification. The tube network still acts as an express route to the central city and its
impact on housing markets is widely understood13 . Certainly a premium was set
(usually an additional ten percent) on those properties within a ten minute walk of a
tube station.
It appeared that a valid distinction could be made between modes of gentrification
which involved a more traditional ‘gentry’, or middle class, and a process which relied
primarily on vast levels of personal wealth less related to a hierarchical class structure;
either through inheritance or foreign business i.e. foreign affluent workers whose class
position is made less clear by their short periods of residence in this area.
The involvement of estate agents was perhaps wider than might at first be thought.
The TRW from Kensington described how estate agents were;
“involved at all levels, they don’t just create a market, they are also involved in
representing landlords at rent assessment committees they are looking for the
highest possible fair rent, they are making vast amounts of money…Many are
international, all looking for this ‘non-resident, tons of money consumer’ but the
result is that the borough is experiencing higher and higher levels of crime”
The role of the estate agent is instrumental in the development of gentrification. In
areas like Kensington it appears that the market has both been distorted beyond the
recognition of local inhabitants and been appropriated both by foreign wealth and
agents who profit from such customers.
Another role of the estate agent comes in the form of the pre-packaging of places ‘ripe
for gentrification’. As the rent officer in Wandsworth alluded many agents have tried
to apply names which conjure up images of village, community or pastoral scenes
such as;
“Earls Court Village…an estate agents creation and is highly gentrified, there has
been a massive amount of displacement in those areas”
The new transport links being created south of the river have lead to a large amount of speculation as
to whether older areas like Peckham and Brixton will see people buying as an investment in areas
where a house may cost as much as a flat in a more popular area of London. A number of conversations with agents in these areas showed that prices since 1990
had soared. One agent described the current changes in Netting Hill as ‘economic
migration, as it should be in my view’, apparently adding a veneer of legitimacy to the
process of displacement which he admitted was going on in the area. Such areas
appear to fade from view as their credentials as an expensive but ‘hip’ area become
more widely known.
Discussions with agents further revealed that many ‘gentrifiers’ would rent in the area
while looking for the ideal property. The market was most buoyant at the top end of
the market where rises in price had also been most acutely felt. Asked what the
transformation of the area would do for affordability there appeared to be a general
agreement that it was unlikely lower paid workers would be able to afford property in
the area – even ex-council flats and previously ‘dangerous’ areas were witnessing a
good deal of interest.
While it was clear that a traditional pattern of renting to owning was going on there
was verbal evidence given that renting was also moving upward in its socio-economic
profile. Kensington and Chelsea still has one of the largest private rented sectors in
the country. The link between gentrification and renting was also made clear in
Hammersmith;
“There is gentrified private rented accommodation now – accommodation people
couldn’t afford, its not affordable housing…an awful lot of it has gone from
private rented to owner occupied or from private rented at affordable levels [in
Hammersmith] to private rented at unaffordable levels – gentrified in that way,
that is certainly the case in the mansion blocks, rents in mansion blocks are
£3 0,000 a year”
and;
“there has been a major loss of particularly family accommodation in favour of
company lets [in Camden]…and that is mirrored by the increase of single
homelessness in the borough – people can’t access or use the private rented
sector – there are real problems.”
The issue of company lets came up several times and provided another route for
private rented accommodation to enter a rented but restricted access tenure and it appeared that people had been cleared out of properties in order to make them
company lets. It appeared that rented accommodation was still moving into the owner
occupied sector where it was more profitable to do so;
“what we see is properties that are quite happily going along being rented with
quite a lot of houses in the Fulham area where they might have been rented in an
HMO situation, not self contained but with, say, two families, but now as soon
as there is any kind of vacant possession there landlords are into self containing,
extending, doing them up often then selling them rather than renting them
out…where the landlord thinks that they can bring any pressure to bear to get rid
of the tenants then they do it”
There is also an interaction between local authority roles in areas such as
environmental health where the enforcement of standards can have an unintended
negative consequence for affordability and provision so that bedsits are;
“converted into flats, frequently sold to owner occupiers or rented at the top end
of the market. Rent levels have really increased in Camden and one of the
things…LA environmental health have tried to [do is] improve standards in that
type of shared accommodation by encouraging self containment but that tends to
have meant that the profile of people living there, when the original tenants die,
changes so your getting younger professional people looking for temporary
accommodation or overseas business men coming into those areas”
This rental at the top end of the market also seems to be related to a transitory series
of company lets which mirrors the ‘absent’ form of gentrification to be found in south
Kensington. Whether this can be considered gentrification is debatable since it may
not be considered to be a residential form of the process yet the effects are the same
and so is the rationale – higher paying buyers and renters;
“the wards that have the highest levels of private renting both have bizarre
populations. There is a large Japanese community living in the private rented
sector in Belsize…you see more and more lettings agencies advertising for
company lets”
and;
Another of the large landlords in Camden is Crown estates, they are quasi public
and quasi private landlords and they have been actually selling and emptying
some of their properties on long leases to the Shanghai bank to be used as
company lets”
The loss of certain dwelling types (HMOs and non-family homes) by social or
physical alteration is important because it means that (a) displacement is required to
make it available and (b) a relatively fixed level of supply of these dwelling types is
lost to those groups who need such accommodation.
