Manchester's Student Buildings.

[jrb]

Originally Posted by EverythingButABeach

Disagree. It's been demonstrated that people like to live in areas with similar like minded people. It's much more sensible to concentrate the HMOs in certain areas like Fallowfield than to put a HMO or student house in every street. When I was a student I was happy to live next door to other students. Now I'm not a student I'd rather not live next door to them.

The other point is that the property we are talking about (inner city terraces with no parking plus no garden on busy roads) is not particularly suitable for the needs of the modern family. They are great for multiple occupancy though. If you remove the market for them then they will become slums again. Yes this will make them very affordable in the same way you can buy a 3 bed terrace in Gorton/Bradford for 60k. I'm not sure that's a good thing is it? You'll also make all the shops/restaurants/pubs and bars more affordable when they start boarding them up (like the 1970s/1980s when the Wilbraham Road corner of Owens Park was a car scrap yard!).

NB The council would have to pay compensation if it denies landlords the ability to rent their property as a HMO for future losses.
There will also be a lot more students in Manchester in the future than at present. It'll be 'Mickey Mouse' institutions like the Universtity of Kent/Essex/Lampeter/Lincoln/East London etc. that'll get closed down. If anything that'll concentrate the numbers in the major institutions. Manchester Uni and Man Met have the highest number of applicants in the UK and could easily quadruple current numbers if they could fund expansion (and decided to).

BTW Manchester is one of Europe's top 20 cities by size and is a world top 100 international city by GDP. It's currently the UK's fastest growing conurbation (and thus probably Europe) and faces exactly the same issues as London (therefore requiring a lot more HMOs and not less).

PS I'd agree that 5 bed houses need 2 toilets/shower rooms.

I'm happy to take you around Ladybarn(and Fallowfield) and to show splendid Victorian housing stock which could be used by families, but which is now student housing and is rundown and uncared for, and is blighted by shitty curtains, more shitty curtains, and even more shitty curtains.

Don't get me me wrong I'm not blaming students. They don't give a shit and they're paying for that privilege. Saying that they could and should take their bottles, cans, and takeaway litter home with them, instead of....(fill in as appropriate)

I blame the Landlords. Greedy bastards who don't give a fuck about their houses or the area.(sorry for swearing) All they give a fuck about is that the direct debit or standing order payments are paid into their bank accounts on time.(sorry for swearing once again)

I lived in one of those terraced houses in Ladybarn. I did it up and sold it within two days. A young couple bought it off me. It's still lived in, looked after, and cared for to this day. (my partner had look today as she drove through Ladybarn) Thankfully I refused to sell it to a landlord. My conscience is clear.

[GShutty]

The feedback that I have been getting is that MCC are strongly pushing ahead with this in any case. They are interpreting an HMO certified property as any property with 5 or more tenants regardless of whether it is 3 or more stories.

The are also stating that one must apply for planning permission for any accommodation that would have three or more non-related occupants (which would be HMO compliant, but not certified) and are putting an end to 'permitted development' extensions, the idea being that any extension that one would plan for there property maybe approved on the provisio that it will not enhance an HMO property.

I guess by implementing all of this means that it will be easier to encourage/ coerse developers in to pressing ahead with the development of large student accommodation, which I guess they hope will regenerate areas such as Hulme. If the HMO houses are then taken up by families, this equals a win-win for the council, who the get 'desirable suburbs' to 'sell' to businesses they want to relocate to the city and get additional council tax and spend from (wealthy?) families that stay within the city.

[roverman]

Indeed, Manchester City Council (MCC) took steps to avoid being liable to compensate would-be HMO landlords by giving 12 months notice of their intention to introduce the Article 4 Directive, as have many other local authorities. In MCC's case the Directive came into force on October 8th this year. That is deemed a reasonable period of notice to cover any transactions which were recently completed or pending at the time notice was given. From the date the Directive applies it is 'caveat emptor' as it is with any other property purchase - the buyer and/or their conveyancer must search for the planning regulations applying, and satisfy themselves as to whether or not they are likely to be granted permission to develop the property or change its use.

To summarise the points I made in my original post, here is my case for providing purpose-built accommodation for students in preference to HMOs:


1.There is an oversupply of HMOs in some districts of Manchester which has lead to an imbalance in both the tenure of housing stock, and the demographics of the residential community. This is now widely (and belatedly) recognised as harmful to community cohesion and sustainability.

2. Students are mainly temporary and seasonal residents, and the housing they occupy is in effect a second home. If they occupy housing which is suitable for families or older people, they reduce the supply available to those groups.

3. The lifestyle of many students makes them difficult neighbours and can blight areas with high concentrations of student housing.

4. Students and other very young people often lack the maturity and life-skills needed to run a household with due regard for the environmental and community impact. This is much less of a problem when their housing is purpose-provided and managed.

5. Landlords letting HMOs rarely have much interest in the properties and neighbourhoods beyond maximising their rental revenues. They are very limited and one-sided stakeholders.

6. The most successful cities retain a balance of population, including a settled professional middle-class. This group is notably under-represented in inner Manchester. The creation of high-skills jobs in Manchester requires places for those who fill them to live. There must be enough supply of suitable residential accommodation to buy, or rent long-term. If these jobs are taken by people choosing (or being forced) to live mainly in places like Hale or Wilmslow, then the city will gain only limited benefit because they will not be fully engaged in the community of Manchester or be paying local taxation. Good quality houses with gardens are needed in convenient and pleasant locations within the inner suburbs.

7. The Universities are very beneficial to Manchester. The student community does add something positive to the city and to individual areas as long as the proportions are kept in balance and there is no loss of the housing stock required for settled families and older people.

[EverythingButABeach]

I've just looked at the new regs. Jeez what a total mess. If it wasn't such a serious subject I'd be laughing my head off at the incompetence of the new regulations.

Basically the new rules don't really change anything apart from being unenforceable and quite mad.

The new regs only applies to new properties being converted into HMOs (post 8th Oct 2011). If it was a licenced or unlicenced HMO previously with less than 7 people then nothing changes (and no they didn't need regulating or a bit of paper). BUT it means if anyone had rented a house to a family the property will now be worth 50% as much as they now CAN'T subsequently rent it to 3 unrelated people no matter if it's been done up like Buckingham Palace.

So there you have it landlords. Don't try and be family friendly or the council will bankrupt you. Genius.
Don't try and provide good sized rooms or sound proofing as it doesn't matter in any way shape or form. As long as you've got a bit of paper or done it historically you can cram as many people in as possible.
But if you're planning to do up a house with top whack fixtures (large rooms, granite worktops blah blah) for 3 young professionals to rent then you could go to jail.

So in 5 years time if you see a row a terraces in Fallowfield and 50% are rented to students and the other 50% are boarded up you'll know why.

I could be wrong though. Paul Calf and his chums at the council might be correct in thinking the families of Wilmslow suddenly fancy living in a 4 bed terrace with no garden, no parking, on main roads, high levels of crime, lots of students (they'll always live near the Uni) and very very shit schools. Funnily enough they haven't moved into Gorton which is an area with identical housing stock without the large HMO demand...

NB I wonder where all those people under 35 on benefits are supposed to live now that they have to be in HMOs (to qualify for housing benefit) just when the council has banned new HMO rentals.

Lose/Lose again.

[roverman]

EBAB,

Why such a gloomy worldview? There are plenty of potential wins here.

If students are increasingly housed in purpose-built accommodation, then more existing HMOs are available to others, including young people claiming housing benefit. There is plenty of empty housing which could be brought into use - 2 large Victorian houses on my street, long-term vacant, for starters.

I wouldn't expect people living in Wilmslow to up sticks and move to my street - although they might be surprised at some of the benefits. What I expect is that more families will find that they can buy a house in Withington when one comes up for sale, because it is less likely to be snapped up by a tax-deducting landlord.

Come and have a look at my part of Withington - Parsonage Road area - 30-40% are HMOs. Almost all have big gardens, off-road parking, some are still just about 'nice' houses, despite neglect. Not the picture you paint. The gardens which children could play in only get used for the occasional barbeque, and are otherwise derelict and often overgrown. These wonderful characterful houses are vacant three to four months of the year - a shocking waste.

The local primary schools (St. Pauls etc) are very good. The state run high schools may not be the best but right on the doorstep are Withington Girls, Manchester Grammar and Manchester High - some of the best in the country and which many of your Wilmslow types send their kids to.

Mr Landlord letting to a family as you describe doesn't have to lose - he can let to another family when his tenants move out - there is huge demand because people with young families are saving up to buy.

And I say 'Great' if property prices come down as a result of the HMO rules, and more people can afford to buy their own. I still have a £100k mortgage but I don't care, I would rather see a less divided society.

[GShutty]

Hey Everything But a Beach. There are already regulations for bedroom size (and minimum safety requirements) and living room size within the HMO compliance guidelines.

With this and the new guidelines preventing permitted developments i.e. extensions, it should mean that current housing stock is limited in the sense that you can't make a 2 bed terrace in to a 6 bed let for example.

Some house prices have already suffered, but in reality they have shifted from inflated landlord prices, to first/second time buyers and young professionals & young families have been buying some of these, where landlords would have previously purchased.

I don't think anybody is under an illusion that families from Wilmslow will suddenly up sticks and move to Withington/Fallowfield particularly, but families that might otherwise have moved to Cheshire, because the area in which they live is 'too studenty' may well stay and new families that purchase in these areas may well stay for longer as the areas re-transform.

Some roads such as those across from Owen's Park will probably never again be family areas and in many ways, why should they be. The roads behind Sainsbury' Fallowfield are more mixed and may suffer more in the short-term, but this took a generation to become what we have today and IMO will take a generation to really see a significant turn-around. The Hartley estate around Parsonage Road offers great family stock and IMO is the worse for the large multi-let conversions that have spread through there.

This area of South Manchester will continue to prosper IMO. The hospitals, the universities, the airport and the location between Cheshire and the City Centre, will continue to prove popular and are among the USPs that for example Gorton doesn't have.

[roverman]

Perhaps a subject for a new thread, but it does follow on a theme set here - Manchester needs to be careful to pitch its appeal across the board if it is to ensure long term regeneration and prosperity. The popular slogans such as ' a city which thinks a table is for dancing on' are a bit of fun but perhaps indicative of a more serious underlying reality. Manchester has developed a strong appeal for the young in part because of its reputation as a hedonistic party town, with a culture of alcohol and drugs. The flip side is that this could alienate people with skills looking for somewhere to settle into family life.

Not wishing to sound like a Baptist preacher here - there's noting wrong with a drink and a dance - but the demograhics of the UK indicate the young (16-24 yrs, and 25-34yrs) becoming a smaller proportion of the population over the next generation, with the older age groups growing. Therefore, appealing mainly to the young and deterring older people risks a shrinking city population, or at least a population which is progressively less representative of the country as a whole. Hence my emphasis in earlier posts on the need for Manchester to ensure that there is adequate supply of housing and neighbourhoods suitable for settled professional people, within its boundaries. People who see the city as their long-term home, and somewhere they feel comfortable raising children. That means good-sized houses, gardens, safe parks, a balanced range of shops, limits on noisy bars and clubs in suburban areas, limits on student housing in suburban areas, social networks and cohesion, and better schools. In many areas the housing stock is there, it is just currently in the wrong tenure. And beneath the litter and detritus of HMO-land are once-pleasant streets, which could be so again.

Too many of Manchester's middle-class are today living in exile, fled or forced out towards Cheshire like any other species whose habitat is destroyed or fundamentally altered against their favour. They may still work in the city, they may shop here and help to promote it. But they cannot be truly engaged in the civic life of the city unless they live right here, close to the centre. Sometimes known derogatorily as the Bourgeoisie, or the chattering classes, but show me a successful city without them. There may once have been a political agenda or at least ambivelance to the loss of these possibly non-Labour voters, but now the City Council has woken up to the dangers of alienating these influential people. The Article 4 Directive is but one line of action. Much more remains to be done.

I am not advocating wholesale gentrification. I do not want to see inner Manchester cleansed of poor people who need social housing, far from it. It is about re-balancing the communities in favour of long-term residents from across the social spectrum. Manchester has lots of social housing - this stock is rarely taken up by landlords and students, and much of it is still rightly in public ownership.

Most students will leave Manchester upon graduating or when they are partied-out and looking for new openings. They are an ongoing part of the city's present but not, in the main, the city's future residents. They need decent housing, but not by displacing permanent residents. Therefore, coming back to the core of this thread, I welcome the current trend towards large-scale purpose-built student blocks close to campus.

[iheartthenew]

I guess this is the appropriate thread for this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...ester-15999293

[roverman]

Originally Posted by iheartthenew

I guess this is the appropriate thread for this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...ester-15999293

Not clear from the article whether the properties are HMOs but knowing that neighbourhood it's odds-on that they are. This sort of thing goes on in Fallowfield and Withington too, and I'm glad to see action being taken. The same sort of vandals have just demolished one of the last remaining Victorian coach house annexes at a long vacant house on my road, and another HMO landlord has removed a large tree from a front garden, in the process demolishing a fine brick wall and left it as a pile of rubble. That probably doesn't happen where he lives and parks his personal number-plated 4x4.

[Slow Burn]

Steel work currently being erected for the Worthington Properties student accommodation blocks adjacent to Whitworth Park on Denmark Road. Taken today



It will eventually look like this

[Slow Burn]

...and work progressing on the opposite side of the park on some more student blocks...



Can't find the render of what this will look like when finished though

[Slow Burn]

Student accommodation on Heald Place/Moss Lane East adjacent to Whitworth Park

[Slow Burn]

Marcus Worthington Ltd new blocks on Denmark Road

[monkey_rat]

Thanks for the updates.

I like these gap filling developments round the park, make it feel a lot more urban.

Had no idea they'd started building on Denmark Road - have they pulled down terraced houses to make way for these?

[Slow Burn]

Originally Posted by monkey_rat

Thanks for the updates.

Had no idea they'd started building on Denmark Road - have they pulled down terraced houses to make way for these?

Not sure tbh, the plot has been nothing but empty land for at least the last 3 years or so

[Irish Blood English Heart]

How much is the Whitworth for sale for?

Once upon a time that was the only decent boozer around there, but has a lot more competition these days I guess.

[kids]

I think there was actually an Edwardian school building to the back of the Denmark St development that was demolished. Presumably the front onto the street used to be the yard.

[Irish Blood English Heart]

Aye it was a school there.

[Slow Burn]

Little update on the student development surrounding Whitworth Park

Moss Lane East / Heald Place




Denmark Road. This is coming along very quickly. Hate to think how this will look when finished. There's some poor quality buildings surrounding the park now

[jrb]

Planning » Planning Application Documents
11/60561/OUT | Outline planning application with all matters reserved for the erection of a 7 storey building consisting of 496 units for student accomodation together with ancilliary facilities and a covered walkway across the River Irwell | Manchester Metals & Alloys Meadow Road Salford M7 1PA

Planning docs.

http://iclipseweb.salford.gov.uk/Ani...h/Results.aspx

Design and access statement

http://iclipseweb.salford.gov.uk/Ani...s/08401873.pdf