Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Estate, a Reverie, 2015. All rights reserved.Against the backdrop of the capital’s housing crisis, spiralling rents, the gentrification of ‘real’ London and the fierce political battle being waged between the landlords and residents of this city, Estate, a Reverie presents us with a moving, personal documentation of what the gentrification of London really means to the people who are affected by it. The film immerses its viewer in the world of the final days of the condemned Haggerston Estate in Hackney, east London, and its tenants.
In April 2007, Hackney Homes began to cover the windows of the empty flats with orange boards. The residents were balloted on a stock transfer to the housing association L&Q, pending the demolition of the estate and their rehousing elsewhere. Having fruitlessly campaigned for the estate’s basic maintenance for 30 years, the Haggerston tenants were more or less forced to vote in favour of the demolition of their estate, with a 71 percent vote in favour. Demolition began in 2010, and reached Samuel House, the last block left on the estate, in 2014. By October of that year the building was gone. In its place now stands The City Mills development, where a privately owned top floor, two-bedroom flat will set you back 820,000 pounds.
Andrea Zimmerman, the director of the documentary, was herself a tenant of the Haggerston Estate for 17 years, having moved into Samuel House in 1997. By 2004, the building had officially stopped accepting new occupants. Zimmerman offers a brief, dreamlike snapshot of life for those tenants who remained on the estate during its final days.
