Interview with Ian Horsburgh regarding his work and efforts in starting up Cardiff Flat Shop

Description

Interview with Ian Horsburgh about Cardiff Flat Shop, 26 November 2016.

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IH = Ian Horsburgh

[Discussing Cardiff Flat Shop]

IH: So I'm going to talk about Cardiff Flat Shop. And this started because when we ran the advice line for Cardiff Community Concern, we had a lot of young homeless people come into the office. And there was a particular problem with 16 to 17-year-olds, because at 16 you are left if you have been adopted or if you, not adopted, if you have been, um, fostered or whatever you can be thrown out and left to your own devices. It was a very serious situation then and I am afraid the situation for those, that group has got even worse, it's not got better.

So we had homeless people coming in, and with nowhere to stay, young people, and it was because the council had no responsibility for them, they had no council housing for single young people or childless couples, they only dealt with families. So, young people coming in, nowhere to stay. So there was only two, three things they could do.

They could go and sleep rough or they could go, um, and this was at the time of squats, they could go into a squat, there was a lot of empty property at that time in Cardiff, or they could go to something what we call crash pads where people just put people up in their own homes. It was a huge risk and you wouldn't probably do it now. I can remember one or two people staying in my flat, it was a bit difficult. And that's what we had to do.

We also had a solicitor, a friend of mine, John Ball, who also helped them with, squatters, with legal advice. He was a trained, I think he was still a trainee solicitor. But what surprised the squatters was when they went to get advice from him and [he] said well actually I can give you some legal advice. And his first thing if they asked him something about squatting he said well, his answer was, “Well, in my squat what we do”, because he himself was squatting and that rather shook them.

We also had one chap who came in, who said he was homeless and he had had a terrible time, in fact he was sleeping in his car. And we thought this was terrible so we contacted the South Wales Echo and they did a big story about this chap sleeping in a car and a lady in the valleys somewhere took pity on him and took him into her house and looked after him, which was very nice.

There was also another article in the South Wales Echo. And the person Genus [?] who is now dead, I think her name was Fuzz Toyne, very keen on Jazz I remember, she rang me at work. She was a very nice lady but she was nearly crying and said, “I am really sorry to tell you but the police have been in touch with me. They saw the article in the paper. The car that he’d been sleeping in, he’d stolen.” [Laughs] So she was very upset and they had to put a little piece in the back page somewhere that…to explain what had happened. So then we got that problem.

Jill Hutt then appears on the scene and was involved with Cardiff Community Concern. And we noticed that in London there was I think, um, a charity that was dealing specifically with young people, I can’t remember the name of it. And we thought that was a good idea, we could do with something like that in Cardiff to help young single and childless couples. And we, she then wrote a report saying this is what is needed in Cardiff and to cut a long story short we set up a registered charity and we called it the Cardiff Flat Shop, And the idea was that it would campaign for this group of people on their housing needs.

And also we’d set up a system like an agency of landlords and people who were willing to give accommodation to these people and also a list of people who wanted it. So you have to remember that at that time there were very few letting agencies, there was only one or two, Need Property and one or two others, so there was very few. So this was all fairly interesting stuff and this was work that the council wasn’t doing. We then applied for Urban Programme Funding which was 75% funded by the Welsh Office and 25% funded by Cardiff Council and that was for three years.

And one of our workers, and we were successful in getting that, and that was based in 58 Charles Street. And one of the people we employed was John Wilson who then became a community worker, youth worker in Cathays Community Centre. And I am not sure if he is still there but he is around. We had a problem when the funding expired and somebody called Huw Thomas who was a lecturer at the University was in his union and took on his case. And we had a very difficult situation where we had to sort of sack him and the union got involved and it got very difficult.

But the Flat Shop was quite influential because it had on its committee people from social services, probation, and the person from probation was Mark Drakeford who of course is now an Assembly Member and is, I think is the Chief Finance Minister so he would remember this very clearly. And also, to our surprise, there was a new Chief Housing Officer for Cardiff who had come from Ipswich and, up to that time, the housing policy was fairly straightforward and conservative in Cardiff. Doug Peckham came along and tried to shake it all up. And he came on our committee and he was very involved with us. So he was…to have the Chief Housing Officer on our committee was really quite important.

So we were moving things and perhaps the most important thing that happened, at that time, Doug Peckham said well, we've got to have some housing. And we persuaded the council to build flats in Tudor Street, new ones, for young, for single people and childless couples. And that was the first housing for this group that was built in Cardiff.

And if it hadn't have been for the Flat Shop that wouldn’t have been there. After the funding ran out, I'm not quite sure what happened, I think it carried on as a voluntary group. And then I do know it then moved and was, into the offices of, I think, of Women's Aid in Tudor Street, I'm not quite sure, and then finally it became incorporated within Cardiff Council because the policies that we, the things that we were pushing were then taken over by the council. And that's about it.

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