Local Heroes: Hero who led fight to clean up a lawless estate
TWELVE years ago the Waterworks estate in Edgbaston was run by drug dealers and pimps.
Burglaries and car thefts were rife, gangs of yobs roamed the streets and prostitutes entertained their clients on mattresses in the street.
The estate was home to 40 crackhouses and 2,400 prostitutes.
Today it could not be more different. The crime rate has plunged to virtually zero and the working girls, drug dealers and pimps have gone.
So great is the transformation that the estate is now held up across the world as a place where “people power” has won the day.
And most of that change can be laid at the door of unassuming grandfather Chris Hoare.
Mr Hoare, aged 66, got so fed up with the problems plaguing his beloved estate he got off the sofa and did something about it.
He formed the Birmingham South West community group 12 years ago and has not looked back.
Mr Hoare was on first name terms with Gordon Brown, has already met David Cameron and a steady stream of politicians have trooped to the estate to admire the group’s work.
His house is filled with photos of himself, local police and other members receiving awards – and those are just the ones on show.
“I’ve lost track of the awards we’ve won,” Mr Hoare said. “I’ve had to stuff most of them in drawers because I don’t want people to think I’m big headed.”
He also sheepishly admits he has a direct phone number for No.10 and the Home Office. “But that’s only in case I need to get advice straight away if anything flares up,” he admits.
Mr Hoare said he decided to form the group because he was fed up with his daughters having to walk over syringes and condoms every time they left the house and be confronted by prostitutes with their clients.
“Things had got so bad that Barrow House – a sheltered housing complex – had been taken over by the prostitutes who had put mattresses everywhere and went with men in the flats next to where an old person was living,” he said.
“The shops were paying protection money and if you parked your car for any length of time you could come back and find a girl inside with a punter. It was complete and utter lawlessness – the pimps and drug lords were running the estate.
“I’d lived here for 30 years and thought enough is enough and was fed up with no-one doing anything about it.”
