Last man standing' on estate vows to stay as council start action to evict him

SWNS

The 'last man standing' on a housing estate set for demolition has vowed to stay - as the council starts legal action to kick him out.  Retired bank worker Nick Wisnewski, 68, has been living on his own in the derelict Stanhope Place buildings for the last three years.  He is the final resident there amid council plans to demolish the estate and build 300 new homes.  The buildings in Wishaw in Scotland once contained around 200 residents in 128 flats and are set to be demolished as part of a regeneration project.

Transcript

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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