Barbara Millar
High-rise hell

Serguei Serykh, the Russian asylum seeker who, with his wife and stepson, jumped to his death at the weekend from the 15th floor of a high-rise block in Glasgow's Red Road complex has been described in various newspapers as having 'severe mental health problems'.
     The full story of this tragic family and their desperate decision to end their lives will, no doubt, eventually be uncovered. I cannot begin to imagine the psychological torment they endured. But I do know, from personal experience, of the hell that is high-rise living.
     Some newspaper reports suggest the Red Road flats community has been 'supportive' of asylum seekers. Perhaps that is so. But the soulless, ugly environment of a high-rise flat can only have exacerbated feelings of isolation, persecution and the wretchedness of abandonment. I have been there.
     I was 23 and newly-married when I moved into 65, Latham House, Chudleigh Street, London E1. We felt lucky to get a council flat – normally you had to be on the housing waiting list for years before you were so munificently rewarded. But the housing policy of the old Greater London Council (GLC) had been changed – no families with young children were to be housed above the fourth floor of a tower block (as they tend to be known down south) and single people and childless couples were suddenly in demand to take up the empty tenancies.
     The block was in Stepney, East London. It may be gentrified now because of its proximity to Docklands, but back in the 1970s Stepney was anything but posh. Unlike most of the tower blocks in this London borough (the London Borough of Tower Hamlets – well, the towers were certainly there in profusion, but not one remotely resembled a hamlet, with its rural, village-green connotations), Latham House stood alone, a little way back from the noisy, dirty, traffic-polluted Commercial Road, the main thoroughfare leading to the old, long-abandoned docks.
     There were no shops nearby, nor schools, nor any other amenities save an old spit-and-sawdust pub – The British Prince – which wild horses would not have encouraged me to frequent. There were no gardens surrounding the flats, just a car park – all was concrete, asphalt, grey, cold, forbidding. The entrance to the flats was a veritable wind-tunnel. The external lighting rarely worked. It was usually in darkness, which added to feelings of vulnerability at night. There were two lifts, small, stinking of urine, erratic. I have had claustrophobia about using lifts ever since living there. There was a small cracked glass panel in each lift but, otherwise, all was metal.
     I remember the feelings of terror – and that is a big, emotive word but that is precisely how I felt – when, particularly at night, I would step into the lift, press the button for the 11th floor and will, urge, pray for the doors to close before someone else could get in with me. Travelling in a small, slowly-moving box with a stranger – no matter how benign-seeming – was always scary. People rarely exchanged any comments. It was almost like the etiquette of the underground – avoid eye contact, never speak. Those skyward journeys could feel endless.
     Then the doors creaked slowly open and deposited you into a long, empty corridor. I had not, at that time, ever visited a prison but always imagined that it must look like the place where I lived. The corridor was wide, with small windows at each end, and eight doors on each side. Only doors, no windows from the flats into the corridor, so little daylight penetrated. There was always graffiti on the walls (and, usually, in the lift, despite the best efforts of the 'mobile caretakers' – none of them actually wanted to live on site). Nothing witty or political or pertinent, just the usual mindless profanities, adding another layer of depression.
     The door to each flat had a spy-hole – the sort you get in hotel rooms which have the ability to make George Clooney look like Quasimodo when viewed through one. This was our security – and a flimsy door-chain. Opening the door was always an act of faith. You would trust that whoever was on the other side would be friendly and have a valid reason for ringing the bell.

My flat was a maisonette – it had an upstairs. And on the bedroom landing was a barred door with another flight of stairs leading to the corridor on the level above. This was my fire escape. If a fire broke out in my flat or a neighbouring flat, my only way out was to go up, to go higher, to go further away from the ground floor and safety.
     The accommodation was basic. No heating save an electric fire in the living room. Box-like rooms, cold, hard floors, utilitarian decoration - a sort of green I have always associated with the old Soviet Union. Its one saving grace was that, on my side of the building, the big windows (so that the little heat could escape more easily) looked over to the City of London, to the affluence of the city skyscrapers. It was a view which made you yearn to float over the balcony (always covered with pigeon droppings) to that other world, seemingly within reach but, realistically, always just a little too far away to touch.
     I had my first panic attacks when I lived in Latham House. My marriage didn't survive. I carried on living there alone for a while, increasingly scared, even more desperate to get away.
     I hardly ever saw any neighbours. How strange, when there must have been over 150 separate flats within that concrete structure. But I heard my next-door neighbours often – their shrill arguments penetrating the thin wall between us at all hours of the day and night. Then it went quiet. I was relieved. A couple of days later someone came round collecting for a communal wreath. Who is it for, I asked? Your neighbour, came the reply, he hanged himself.
     I was lucky. After four long years there I was able to buy my own flat and escape. Most would never have that opportunity. Many would spend the rest of their lives there – no wonder that valium, offering brief feelings of calm and well-being, was the local drug of choice.
     I am not suggesting that the Serykh family committed suicide because they lived in a high-rise flat: they were from overseas, seeking asylum; they had had their life-line benefits withdrawn; they had absolutely no idea what their future would hold – and little power to influence decisions made about that future. But being forced to exist in a sterile, comfortless, ill-maintained, dumping ground may well have made an already desperate life simply not worth living.

Barbara Millar is a journalist