A series of occasional articles looking at life in Portsmouth from the perspective of members of local landlords

35 years ago I was cautioned by police for carrying out ‘major repairs on a public highway’ outside number 14 Jubilee Terrace because the snooty lady who ran the guest house there believed I was tarnishing the neighbourhood trying to repair my near defunct taxi outside her business (and just 3 doors away from AbbeyTax for whom I was working). It was thus hilarious for me to sit in the Portsmouth City Council Planning Committee  meeting last week and hear local residents plus one councillor extolling the virtues of 14 Jubilee Terrace, a grade 2 listed building, and crying with dismay at the thought of it being ruined by becoming a multi-tenanted house (known in the trade as an HMO – a House in Multiple Occupation).  Apparently it was too important to the city’s heritage to be trusted to mere tenants who might even be students and whoever they were, they would inevitably trash it. Plus there would be the noise and rubbish and general disturbance of people playing music and smoking in the garden and all those other things that normal people don’t do…  And it would be run by a landlord and apparently, all landlords allow their properties to fall into disrepair.

All these good people argued that number 14 needed to remain a ‘family house’.  I have to ask, if you were looking for a ‘family house’ in Southsea would you be interested in a property sandwiched between some post-war eyesore architecture described in the planning meeting as ‘cottages’ and an old pub on a busy main city thoroughfare with limited if any parking opportunity and nothing more than an overlooked courtyard for a garden?  The answer is obviously no, whatever the virtues of the internal layout or décor and it is for this reason that since the end of the war, number 14 and hundreds of other houses like it in Southsea have not been used as family houses.

In the 50’s and 60’s there were guest houses as far as the eye could see and as that trade died out, we were fortunate that Portsmouth University grew to fill the void and provide alternative jobs and a use for so many properties that otherwise would have fallen into disrepair or would have been demolished and replaced with smaller, more densely packed housing.  I know we’d all like to live in rural idyll in the city centre but that is not possible, so can we put away the rose tints and accept that the community we live in is as good as we make it, we all have a role, without the university the whole of Southsea would be like Somers Town was in the late 70’s and without local landlords there would be few with the money to regenerate the houses we all love and cherish and which create the ambience of this city which we all share.  So if you are a good citizen, did you knock the door when students moved in down the road, did you welcome them to Portsmouth and wish them well here, did you take them fresh coffee to refresh them while they unpacked and got settled in? If not, are you surprised they didn’t integrate, didn’t respect your road and now look at you like strange aliens? C’mon people – do as you would like done unto you.