No angel
The council tax humbug
It’s not pleasant to find that the woman you believed to be a martyr for justice and charity is a vindictive, Pecksniffian humbug. But that, I’m afraid, is my verdict on Josephine Rooney.
Rooney, 69, was hailed as a hero last week after she was jailed for deliberate non-payment of council tax.
She said she was withholding the money until Derby council started to clean up the squalid street where she lives. She was handcuffed and led off to the cells where she stayed, briefly, until a well-wisher paid her £ 799 tax bill. On her release, she was feted as a selfless champion of civic values. So I went up to Derby to meet her.
But when I got there I was unable to stand up the straightforward story of Rooney’s David to the council’s unfeeling Goliath. The council has, in fact, put vast effort into making improvements. And the person who has done more than anybody to give a dismal reputation to Hartington Street -and Derby generally – may well be Miss Rooney herself.
Naturally I went to see for myself the gruesome drug dens, choked with used needles and faeces, at the back of two derelict houses and it was revolting. But in all the hours I spent on Hartington Street the most remarkable thing I saw was a pair of drunks sitting on the kerb.
In its essentials, the tree-lined street is pleasant. Most people wouldn’t choose to have a hostel for the homeless on the corner -the spectral inhabitants, shuffling to and fro, might depress anybody after a while. But since 2002, when Hartington Street was given renewal status, the council has re-roofed 47 properties out of 52, cleared and resurfaced the access road behind the houses on one side, installed new street lighting and CCTV cameras and cut back trees so that pedestrians can see clearly along the pavement.
The council says it has also served more than 130 notices requiring improvements from landlords and pursued compulsory purchase orders over six properties that have stood empty.
One resident has opposed the initiatives, it says: Rooney. Specifically, she opposed putting gates onto the access road behind the houses, which would prevent addicts shooting up there. She opposed covering the access road with tarmac, to remove the undergrowth that conceals dangerous rubbish. And she opposed the installation of railings and gates, which would have stopped unwanted visitors loitering in front gardens.
The council’s leader, Chris Williamson, generously describes her as “obviously an energetic community advocate … exactly the sort of person we want to work with to help improve neighbourhoods”. But she consistently refuses to work with the council.
To see why, consider Rooney’s history in Hartington Street.
Born in Surrey and brought up in Ireland, she first bought a property in Hartington Street in the mid-1980s, and soon owned five houses. Numbers 11, 13, 17, 20 and 42 Hartington Street had already been converted for multiple occupancy.
From one of them alone she was generating income of £ 12,000 a year -much more in today’s money.
But until 2000, Rooney used addresses in London and Co Mayo. She was herself, in other words, an absentee landlord -just the sort she now excoriates.
According to council records, as a result of complaints by her tenants, and routine inspections, Rooney was consistently the subject of housing enforcement notices. In one case, the council was called in after a serious fire.
In another, she was given notice of 58 separate items that needed attention in one property. She usually complied with demands that required basic (less costly) work, but not the more expensive ones.
In the 1990s she sold off all but one house for a total of £ 200,000. Shortly afterwards she learnt that the council was introducing generous grants for renewing vacant properties. She quite obviously still resents missing out.
“Businesswise, it was suicide,” she says.
In 2000, while living in Ireland, she received notice from the council that the last remaining property -part of which she now lives in -was unfit for human habitation. If she wanted tenants, she would have to carry out repairs. “They offered a grant worth 10%,” she remembers, “but it was going to cost something like £ 30,000. I was horrified. I was shocked that the council could behave like the Gestapo. I was not going to take on a mortgage to carry on all that.”
Instead, she let her elderly tenant go and moved in herself. Since then, she’s had it in for the council.
One thing that has captured a lot of media attention is Rooney’s kindness towards anybody who comes to her door. In a typical day, 20 to 30 addicts and alcoholics come to her for sandwiches.
Neighbours plead with her to feed these waifs elsewhere -at her church, perhaps.
After all, it’s not as though she actually lets anybody in her house. (“They would steal from me,” she says.) But she won’t listen. On the contrary, she intends to build an outdoor shelter at the back.
“They say I attract these people by giving them sandwiches. Therein lies a paradox. I’m fulfilling the tenets of my faith by feeding the poor. The Christian message is that no matter how repulsive someone is, you have to see Jesus Christ in them.”
I find it distasteful to sit in Miss Rooney’s sitting room, in the presence of her brother, a priest, and listen to this humbug. Because no sooner has she extolled Christian kindness than she says something like this: “I want to sue the council for what they have done to this street. The homeless need to be housed somewhere.
But they don’t need to be housed in our street.”
Rooney was recently awarded £ 1,000 by the government’s Taking a Stand programme for her community work. She has said she intends to give the money to charity. I hope she does. (“I’m waiting for the chequebook to arrive.”)
If I have any doubt, that’s because she brazenly admits to pulling a wheeze on the council in order, as she believes, to save money on tax. “I had to limit myself to one kitchen (in my part of the house) or I would have been charged twice. So we disconnected the plumbing and reconnected it on the same day. But don’t put it in the paper, or they’ll come after me for the tax.”
Only somebody who believes her saintly reputation is invulnerable would admit this.
“I see her face splattered over the papers like some kind of hero, and that makes me really annoyed,” says Lorrae Gee. She and her husband Derrick, a joiner, were Rooney’s tenants 25 years ago. Lorrae was eight months pregnant when she evicted them. Rooney denies evicting them.
“It was 25 years ago,” concedes Gee, “and my memory isn’t brilliant, but that’s not the kind of thing you forget. Derrick was unemployed, so Miss Rooney said she’d give us a month’s free rent if he went to London to work on her property.
But he was offered a permanent job and couldn’t do it, so she told us we had to get out. I was really panicky, I didn’t know what to do.” Gee’s parents took her in. The family still lives in Derby.
“Miss Rooney is a very misguided lady,” says a neighbour who prefers to be anonymous. “She is bitter. She’s got a vendetta against the council.“It might seem unkind to present a 69-year-old woman as less saintly than she’s assumed to be, but Josephine Rooney has unjustifiably heaped disapproval on the council and on landlords in her street. Many have received hate mail from around the world. They, too, deserve to have their reputations protected.
For appearing on Richard and Judy last week, Rooney was paid £ 250. “I think I deserve a treat,” she says. Perhaps so. Alternatively, she could send it to the retired insurance broker who gallantly paid three times as much to get her out of jail.
2 July 06