Community Housing Cymru – Jac o' the North

Send Us Your ‘Homeless’, Your . . .

Jac — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 08:45:46 +0000

This post, the last before Christmas, deals with a ‘consultation process’ that could result in changes being implemented that will prove very damaging to Welsh communities. ◊ PANELS, REPORTS, RECOMMENDATIONS You may remember that some six years ago I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the ‘Welsh Government’ asking how many homelessness organisations there …

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Housing for Wales or housing for the Welsh?

Jac — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 08:50:12 +0000

PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR ♦ We are confronted by a paradox. The stock of housing in Wales is growing, yet less and …

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Housing Associations, a broken model

Jac — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 09:00:11 +0000

PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR ♦ In an earlier post I dealt with Wales & West Housing, a housing association that has branched …

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Wales and West, Labour’s In-House Housing Association

Jac — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 16:00:21 +0000

If you read this blog regularly you’ll know about the takeover of Cantref, a housing association based in Newcastle Emlyn, by Wales and West Housing of Cardiff, a company with strong links to the Labour Party. For those catching up, I advise starting with the post Cantref: ‘Welsh’ Labour Takeover Challenged? To give some chronological marker, …

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Neil McEvoy and the Night Visitors

Jac — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 18:51:01 +0000

I’ve argued many times that Wales is in a bad way, a condition I described in a recent blog as “a basket case country with a begging bowl ‘economy'”. We’re at the bottom of every table measuring the state of the nation – PISA results are woeful, GVA figure are terrible and the number of economically …

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Housing Associations: Secret or Public?

Jac — Mon, 02 Jan 2017 22:22:54 +0000

It’s difficult to know where to start with this rather complex story. Maybe we should go back to 2008 and the Welsh Housing Quality Standard, presented as an attempt to improve the standard of social housing. The WHQS was in fact nothing more than the Decent Homes Standard that operated in England. Another example of ‘Welsh’ …

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Llamau, Yet More Devocolonialism

Jac — Sat, 05 Nov 2016 22:36:02 +0000

IN THE BEGINNING . . . Once upon a time there was an obscure little charity in Barry called the John Rowley Trust, formed in 1986, which ran a hostel for homeless young people. But then, in May 1999, came the first elections to the National Assembly for Wales. Someone said, ‘Ah, a new source …

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Housing Associations – The Great Deception

Jac — Tue, 17 Nov 2015 23:52:19 +0000

REMEMBERING BUDDY HOLLY Back in January I posted a piece, Let’s Be Honest About Housing Associations, that began in nostalgic-humorous mood before going on to make more serious points about the provision of rented accommodation. The fundamental point I tried to make was that up until about a century ago rented accommodation was provided by …

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Nest of Vipers: Third Sector Tales

Jac — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 09:28:00 +0000

Wales is a small country, and once you start delving into the darker recesses of public life you uncover organisations of which you’ve never heard, you discover avenues of questionable funding, and you see names cropping up over and over again. This interconnectedness is not healthy; especially when so many of the shadowy groups and …

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Housing (Wales) Bill, My Response

Jac — Tue, 14 Jan 2014 12:49:51 +0000

Following on from the previous post, here is my response to the Welsh Government’s Department for Communities and Local Government’s Housing (Wales) Bill. The deadline for responses is Friday, so if you want to make a point then do it now, and send it to CELGCommittee@wales.gov.uk. In case the PDF version below should disappear (as …

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