The Other Notting Hill (Notting Hill Housing Trust)

The Other Notting Hill tells the fascinating history of the Notting Hill Housing Trust from its launch in 1963, with a powerful advertising campaign showing a family of six sharing a single room. The Trust was set up to buy and renovate run-down, multi-occupied houses in an area of West London notorious for its slum landlords, racial tensions and the worst overcrowding in Britain. The book describes how the fledgling housing association overcame huge hurdles to re-house families in desperate housing need, the pivotal role it played in a huge community campaign to change the housing policies of the local council, how it carried out an innovative and ambitious programme of housing renewal, how it influenced national policy as the leading member of a new generation of dynamic housing associations. It is now responsible for almost 20,000 affordable homes across West London, including shared equity flats for first time buyers, temporary accommodation for homeless families and rented homes for people on low incomes.

Chris Holmes first became active with community groups in Notting Hill in the 1960s and has almost forty years experience of work with housing organisations, including as Director of Shelter, Director of Housing for an inner London borough, and the director of a community-based housing association. He is a Board member of the Housing Corporation and the Youth Justice Board, and a Visiting Research Fellow with the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR).