GOVANHILL has its problems, but it is no Govanhell, locals have told The National.

This area on the south side of Glasgow, has become notorious, in part, due to what one charity boss recently described as “1960s poverty”, and also because it’s right in the middle of Nicola Sturgeon’s constituency.

This weekend, one right-wing newspaper described the area as “Govanhell: Sturgeon’s slum.”

On the streets around the First Minister’s office on Pollokshaws Road lie discarded furniture and open bags of rubbish.

According to Glasgow City Council, 485 tonnes of illegally fly-tipped material has been taken off the streets in 2016 alone.

In the maps created by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, the government’s tool for identifying the most deprived parts of the country, just released in August, Govanhill is the dark red colour saved for those areas most in need of help.

“The place is absolutely disgusting,” Liz Crombie from the Govanhill Community Campaign says.

“It’s overrun with rats, bedbugs. It’s overcrowded. Filthy. Manky.”

At the heart of this area’s problems are some really bad landlords.

They operate outside the law, letting out flats to large groups of people. No deposits or references needed.

It’s become attractive to those who would struggle to find either the money or the testimonial: the unemployed, the anti-social and huge numbers of migrants.

This, in turn, attracts the unscrupulous, those looking for cheap labour. Anecdotal evidence from local organisation Community Renewal suggested 30-40 per cent of those working in the area were earning less than the minimum wage.

“Rogue landlords are renting out one-bedroomed flats to 15 people at a time,” Crombie says, accusing the government, the police and the council for not putting adequate resources into the area for the sheer number of people living here.

“Until they do that, until then a lot of people will have no respect.”

There are tensions in the area.

The Let’s Save Govanhill group recently announced plans to offer delegates attending this week’s SNP conference a trip to the “Govanhill Ghetto”.

For that group the problems are Sturgeon and the migrants, in particular, the Roma.

In one video, published last week, one of the Let’s Save Govanhill campaigners films a clean back court in a private block of tenements, his scorn for the foreigners only thinly veiled.

“It’s spotless, it’s beautiful, it’s the way a lot of back courts should be, or have the potential to be,” he says. “But there’s one difference about this back court, see the people that live in this back court, I’m going to tell you exactly what kind of people they are, or what type of the people they are, some people might say it’s racist, some people might say, ‘Aw, you shouldn’t be saying that’, but see all the people living in this block, you know what kind of people they are? They’re clean people.”

That group have a good relationship with the Daily Express, the right-wing, anti-EU newspaper owned by former porn-baron Richard Desmond. Angry residents living in the area say that paper and Let’s Save Govanhill are distorting the truth about their part of Glasgow.

Resident and activist Jim Monaghan said: “Govanhill has many complex problems, to change things we must work together as a community, along with the council and the government, our MP, MSPs and councillors. Shouting, self-promoting and trying to blame everything on Nicola Sturgeon and Roma people is divisive and does not help to get anything done to improve Govanhill.

“They’d rather go out on the street and shout let’s save Govanhill,” Crombie says. “I would rather go to the authorities’ door and shout let’s save Govanhill.”

She adds: “To me their campaign just seems to be against Nicola Sturgeon and Nicola Sturgeon is not the only person that can solve this.

“Frank McAveety has got a lot to answer for. And he won’t come out from behind his door in the city chamber and do anything. She can’t do it on her own.”

For their part Glasgow City Council say they’ve spent £25 million on repairs to private property, they’ve also worked with the Scottish Government and Govanhill Housing Association to start buying back some of the houses, and bringing them into the care of registered social landlords.

This scheme has recently bought it’s 100th property.

Housing minister Kevin Stewart is in the area today to make a new funding announcement.

A council spokesman said: “A major objective of the work in Govanhill is to ensure property is properly managed so that many of the issues in the area can be tackled effectively

“Through the acquisition programme and wider engagement with owners, the number of addresses in the most problematic streets with a common property manager has almost doubled in the past year.

“The powers available to the council as part of the Enhanced Enforcement Area and other efforts to target failing landlords will help us to make a lasting difference in Govanhill.”


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