Cedar Tenants Association

Queens Cross Housing Association, the Local Housing Organisation of the GHA in Woodside, is to take part in a pilot transfer scheme (assuming they win a ballot of tenants in the areas which are to take part). The areas which are to take part are Dundasvale, Cromwell and Burnbank. The st Georges estate, where Cedar Court is located, which along with some of the housing around Trossachs st forms the district of South Maryhill LHO committee, will not be balloted and will not take part. The same is true of Hamiltonhill (Hamiltonhill LHO committee).

Reading between the lines in many ways this development is suggestive. We already know that the areas which are not to be included in the trial are under what the GHA terms 'options appraisal', where they make pull our homes down at any time, whereas those areas taking part in the trial are not. Equally we have seen significant underspends in those areas not taking part in the trial with no corresponding underspends in those communities which the GHA and Queens Cross have chosen to include. It seems then no great leap to suggest that our homes are under threat.

Tenants have of course been given absolutely no role in developing these plans, and it goes without saying that we have received absolutely zero information on our area's future. If we want to stop this from taking place and/or achieve some meaningful say in what our landlord and our wannabe landlord are up to, we in this community will have to start to talk to one another, exchange information and try and co-operate to let each other know what these developments mean for all of us and what we should do about them. It should, afterall, be the job of a community to decide its direction, not the role of aloof housing professionals who almost always live somewhere else.