Abode Housing Ltd And The Housing Act 1988

EDM number 57 in 1989-90, proposed by Brian Sedgemore on 23/11/1989.

That this House notes Abode Housing Limited, an off-the-shelf private company with no money, no resources and no experience of owning, managing or running anything, has applied to the Housing Corporation for approval under the Housing Act 1988 to take over De Beauvoir estate in Hackney and other estates in London; notes that at a public meeting on 22nd November, after hearing a presentation by Abode Housing Limited, the tenants of De Beauvoir estate voted on a show of hands by 196 to 0 to reject Abode's plans; notes that Abode is a shell company run by a group of malcontents, incompetents and hustlers, one of whom is a malingerer who works for Lambeth Council; notes that Charles Hyman, the public relations director,lied at the meeting to tenants about their rights and about the provisions of the Housing Act 1988 and that his lies were exposed by the honourable Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch; further notes that the public relations director clearly had no idea of what the term 'affordable rents' meant and that he both asserted and denied at the same time that Abode was a front organisation for City interests; calls on the directors of Abode, including Montgomery Simon, to stop conning the tenants of De Beauvoir's estate; and calls on Sir Hugh Cubitt, Chairman of the Housing Corporation, to end this grisly farce, which has brought the provisions of the Housing Act 1988 into complete disrepute.

This motion has been signed by a total of 24 MPs.