The Creation of a Slum
Lawrence O'Connor bemoans the decline of Pinkham Mansions
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"This view from a Pinkham Mansions window (as at 19.11.03) shows Hounslow Council's strategy to preserve wildlife habitats for rats, mice, pigeons, foxes, disease and maggots/flies by permitting household refuse to accumulate. The refuse below has, at the time of writing, been accumulating for over 5 weeks." - Lawrence O'Connor
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Over a year and a half has passed since Hounslow started to 'improve' Pinkham Mansions, Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick, London.
What was once a merely an elegantly decaying neo-bauhaus collection of buildings now has the appearance of a slum.
The bill so far to taxpayers for creating Chiswick's own little Dickensian ghetto, excluding the bizarrely prioritised high-end kitchen refurbishments & internal redecorations, is documented at currently over half a million pounds.
As regards the external, shared areas of the buildings, it appears that Pinkham Mansions residents are expected to accept that they are not even entitled to basic hygiene less still to an environment that meets even the most basic of human rights to live in dignity.
The contempt of the council and subsequently Hounslow Homes - the Council's Arms Length Management Organisation - toward the residents in how they have 'managed' the refurbishment project and its contractors' is demonstrated by the paucity of the work that has been done for the residents (and the work that has not been done at all). Evidence for this is clear for all to see in the trail of incompetent work and stories from once home proud residents reduced now to exasperated and humiliated individuals by the abuse they feel they have suffered at the hands of the council, Hounslow Homes and its contractors.
Due to the continual state of disrepair over the last 6 months of the access road refuse has often not been collected, sometimes for more than over 5 weeks at a time.
November 19, 2003
Lawrence O'Connor