00:00Welcome to Gowthrapple.
00:02My name is Mike Besmiskis.
00:04I've stayed here in Stanhope Place for 21 years.
00:08There used to be about 200 families
00:10stayed in this street.
00:12Now I'm the last one.
00:14It's certainly a ghost town.
00:26I had a newsletter
00:28through the door a few weeks ago
00:30about out here
00:32and it basically said that
00:36in July they would be
00:38doing the roads.
00:40In August you would see
00:42foundations being started
00:44and actually in September
00:46you'll see houses starting to be built.
00:48Whether the council
00:50is going to offer me one of them
00:52I don't know.
00:54But that is
00:56how it's going at the moment.
01:06When I moved in here
01:0821 years ago
01:10this place was
01:12a nightmare.
01:14It was all horrible purple
01:16painted and horrible.
01:20The place
01:22wasn't full at that time.
01:24It was basically druggies and junkies
01:26that stayed here.
01:28There were just a few in the block
01:30and
01:32when the right
01:34to buy was due to
01:36complete a few years ago
01:38I decided rather than pay rent
01:40it would be beneficial
01:42for me to
01:44buy the flat.
01:46Once the few
01:48druggies
01:50and junkies moved out years ago
01:52the block was filled up
01:54with Polish people
01:56and it was fine.
01:58Everybody spoke to you.
02:16The council
02:18I said that guy
02:20phoned me a year past November
02:22it all started for them
02:24emailing me telling me
02:26you're going to need to move out
02:28we're going to start demolishing in
02:30April. April last
02:32year we're going to start demolishing
02:34which would total lies
02:36you're going to be the only person left there
02:38and
02:40I would speak to
02:42other people in the block and say
02:44have you been told you have to get out?
02:46They'd say no, nobody said anything to us
02:48but they had said it to me
02:50and that went on for months and months
02:52and gradually, eventually
02:54you seen
02:56an odd person moving out
02:58only an odd person
03:00it took a long time for them to
03:02gradually get one to one, get people out
03:04of the different blocks
03:06but as I say I think
03:08with a lot of them, I don't mean this badly
03:10but ones that didn't work
03:12the incentive there giving them
03:14two and a half thousand to move out
03:16great
03:18getting a lot of money to them
03:20and
03:22slowly and gradually
03:24they all started to move out
03:38It's hard
03:40to think but that actually
03:42you were struggling to get a car
03:44parked out there
03:46that's how busy it was, how full it was
03:48with all the Polish people
03:50everybody, some of them had two cars
03:54and look at it now
03:58It's a shame in a sense
04:00quite honestly
04:02they say
04:04it's progress
04:06I don't know that it is
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