IT WAS saddening to read the letter about Genesis Housing Group in the Chronicle. Unfortunately, it was not surprising.
A large number of housing associations now find themselves in financial difficulties and in the unenviable position of having to sell off their only real assets - their social housing - having embarked on extremely unwise exercises in property development and speculation.
Unfortunately, the Royal Borough has given another housing association, Kensington Housing Trust (KHT), the green light to carry out a similarly speculative and unwise experiment on a grand scale in the north of the borough.
Hundreds of homes on the Wornington Green Estate are to be demolished and an existing community uprooted and destroyed so that KHT can, like Genesis, attempt to build and then sell hundreds of boxy little flats on the open market at prices so elevated that any reasonable person would consider them extremely optimistic, if not quite simply insane.
Sadly I doubt KHT will fare any better than Genesis in this regard and thus prove equally incapable of selling boxy little flats to anyone. The end result may prove to be entirely predictable.
I hope those Tory councillors on the council's planning committee who have shown such a distinct lack of foresight and seen fit to inflict such pain on their own residents will be as proud of the end result should KHT prove as incapable as many believe it to be.
JULES MONTERO World's End Estate
Chelsea
