Next Meeting: Summer 2024
Resident Meetings
Once a season we meet in the Boiler House to discuss life on the estate, identifying where important improvements can be made.
What to expect in a meeting
Each meeting begins with brief introductions followed by the group Chair feeding back updates and developments. We discuss the updates and residents share opinions, experiences, thoughts and ideas. Then there’s a window to share any other issues that have not yet been raised.
Moving forwards we will add some different discussion and idea generating formats; firstly breaking into smaller groups where residents can focus on particular subjects. Those that wish to create campaigns around specific issues can get support and assistance.
EVERYONE IS WELCOME
It’s important that residents feel free to be as involved as much or little as they wish.
George Downing Estate Residents Association, GDRA, is an informally constituted association, set up to represent all residents whether leaseholders or tenants. We aim to meet once a season, supporting one another in making our estate a better place to live and work.
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Findings from meetings
Through meeting and discussing we’ve been able to identify key issues; those which are most pressing and affect the widest number of residents.
Dissatisfaction regards the management of the estate by Southern Housing and maintenance by United Living is at a high, and continues to rise. Continuing lack of engagement and inadequate action is creating serious problems. Residents report feeling unsafe, ignored and frustrated.
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Communicating to estate management
This has been shared with Southern Housing via ongoing phone and video meetings. More recently our meetings have been attended by representatives from Southern Housing on four occasions.
We would like to see more Southern Housing presence on the estate, attending meetings, participating in walkabouts, inspecting issues, listening to residents concerns and being more accountable regards actions needed.
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Results and next steps
We’re gathering results and feeding them into the main estate issues list, adding updates as they arise. We’re making this list publicly available and sharing it with Southern Housing. We’ve passed it on to our local councillors and to the Mayor of Hackney, following a request from his office. A formal complaint about the state of their communication system has also been registered with Southern Housing.
Further actions may include making a formal complaint to the Housing Ombudsman and potentially pursuing legal action.
What we’ve gained from meeting
We share our experiences and connect to our neighbours. We gain knowledge from one another and develop awareness of what’s happening across the estate - the first step towards creating change. We’ve picked up local wisdom, tips and techniques, while supporting one another. We all benefit from the spectrum of skills held by people that live on this estate.
The evidence we’ve gathered has been presented to estate management and other external bodies, illustrating the full picture of our issues.
We can combine our voices over shared issues, collectively or via synchronised individual actions. As the saying goes, communities are built together.