Victorian properties to revert to family houses
Housing association Riverside Group is to spend £4.6m converting empty properties in Kensington and Wavertree, Liverpool, from flats back into family homes.
The organisation, one of the UK's biggest registered social landlords with more than 50,000 units, said a "significant number" of properties in and around Botanic Road alongside Wavertree Park would be "restored to their former glory".
James Hill, director of property strategy at Riverside, said: "The aim of the investment programme is not only to transform lives by bringing affordable homes back into use but also to revitalise neighbourhoods by breathing new life into streets blighted by boarded-up properties.
"Some of these houses have been empty for up to 10 years because of poor condition, lack of demand or funding issues but now they are going to contribute towards sustainable, mixed tenure neighbourhoods. The programme will also generate local employment."
The majority of the properties will be available for social rent. Some will be sold on the open market and others will be sold via Own Place, an initiative which offers eligible buyers a 25% discount on the market value of an improved property on the condition that they live there for at least five years and don't rent it out.
Hill said Riverside has recently sold over 100 properties in run down areas enabling a transformation of the tenure balance in previous rented streets.
This is wonderful. Why knock down perfectly good houses when they can be refurbished. I applaud Riverside’s actions and sentiments. Well done.
By Pat Audoire
great news!! bring back into use more and more characterful, graceful houses all over liverpool
By baias
This is fabulous news! We need more of this instead of ripping down characterful family homes to replace them with the likes of what is being built in Kensington at the moment (pokey, flimsy, and ugly houses and flats)- the heart has really been ripped out of the place. Speaking to people who live around there who have been CPO’d they do not wish to live in the types of houses that are being newly built and also havent been given enough compensation to buy one of the new houses! These terraces are beautiful! If you are used to living in this style of house you would not want to move to a cramped new build ‘with shared open space. More of this sort of thinking is needed – I think the report on the Welsh Streets and how these types of houses make good homes is being heard by some. So well done Riverside – please keep this up. Now can they save the the homes around Granby St/Princess Park. When will implications change so developers and RSLs are given more encouragement/breaks/grants to save these houses rather than it be cheaper/more beneficial tax wise to rip them down?
By Secret Squirrel
This is what we, the community have been waiting for. Riverside have come up with a great incentive to encourage local people to buy property in the area in which they grew up. There are a lot of victorian/Georgian properties in this area which are part of Liverpools history laying to waste. Its a shame no one considered the history or sense of community when Riverside and other housing associates knocked down the properties along Gramby, Mulgrave and Upper parliament Street many years ago.
By leeanne daniel