Neighborhood Politics: Chicago and Sheffield by Larry Bennett

Author:Larry Bennett [Bennett, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781135596897
Google: D4kuAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 19149603
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1997-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

The writer's claim is true enough. For the better part of the roughly five-year period during which serious tenant organizing sought to resolve the Broomhall Flats situation, the leaders of the BTA anticipated that the flats would be saved. Indeed, at the meeting of the Broomhall Project Group in mid-January 1984, tenants and Sheffield officials discussed a piece of equipment—a dehumidifier—recently developed at the local technical college, Sheffield Polytechnic, which might be used to reduce moisture in the flats. Although the dehumidifier was described as a "sophisticated bucket placed under a leak," Howard Knight nonetheless suggested that it might be considered "part of a package as an alternative to demolition."38

With the summer of 1984 the Sheffield Council at last authorized the inevitable. At the end of April the city's Director of Housing reported to the Housing Committee on the steep cost of repairing and rehabilitating Broomhall Flats.39 Within weeks the Legal Department advised the council that there was no chance of succeeding in new litigation against Shepherd and Sons. Still, the council could not quite pull the trigger, and in May only ordered the evacuation of the flats. In July the council did approve a demolition order, though even this action did not quite close the story of the unhappy estate. Just as the construction of Broomhall Flats was checkered by tragedy and unforeseen circumstance, the closing down of the estate proved tortuous. Residents were eligible for relocation grants, but by early 1985 the council—locked in combat with the Thatcher government over the setting of local rates— had no funds for these cash advances.40 Throughout late 1984 and most of 1985 the derelict estate was subject to break-ins by vandals and squats by homeless people. A number of the remaining tenants were physically assaulted.41 When the BTA held its last meeting, in October 1985, there were still seven people occupying the flats. The last two Broomhall Flats tenants left the complex a few weeks before Christmas 1985.

The greater portion of the Broomhall Flats residents resettled near their former homes. Throughout the late 1980s there were press accounts of proposals to redevelop the cleared Broomhall Flats site, but nearly a decade passed before the construction of a new residential estate occurred.42 In a manner quite characteristic of the public-private partnership ethos favored by the Thatcher and Major governments, Sheffield's Housing Department co-developed a portion of the site with the United Kingdom Housing Trust. In place of the 653 brutalist units of Broomhall Flats rose 106 flats and 32 houses available for rent, some designed to accommodate the aging. In addition, on the ring road side of the site a private developer offered houses and flats for sale. The new estate's construction techniques, architecture, and site plan, were strictly traditional: two- and three-floor brick structures arranged on gently curved streets. And to further distinguish the new development from its troubled predecessor, the Broomhall Flats site was optimistically renamed Broom Springs. Although former tenants of Broomhall Flats could exercise first claim on the new rental units, after so many years there were few takers.

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