My sister, Yvonne Hutchinson, who has died aged 50 of cancer, overcame a troubled early life to establish herself as a notable housing campaigner and a champion of community regeneration.
Born in Bradford as one of eight children of our Jamaican parents, Olivia (nee Robertson), a cook, and Irael, a foundry worker, Yvonne grew up on some of the roughest council estates in the city. The death of our father when she was 12 hit her particularly hard. She was expelled from two schools and ended up in care, experiencing the notorious “pin-down” punishments on many occasions. In her late teens she gravitated into striptease shows (although she told us it was dancing), and once when I was home from university visiting her in Bradford the vice squad came banging on the door. By now seriously streetwise, when she found out they didn’t have a warrant she sent them packing in no uncertain terms. I didn’t want to ask why the vice squad knew her by name.
Later she travelled the world dancing, finding trouble wherever she went, including in Israel, where she was kidnapped. Back home, she narrowly escaped jail after stabbing an ex-partner. Her son Paul, born when she was 18, was brought up by my mother for his first 10 years and her second child, Rebecca, was sent away for adoption.
In 1990, however, Yvonne found Christianity. She went on to gain a degree in peace studies from Bradford University and began to put all her energies into helping to regenerate Ripley Ville, the Bradford council estate where she lived. Eventually she managed to secure £3m in regeneration funding for the neighbourhood. The project was highlighted as best practice by the National Housing Federation and Yvonne was named one of her home city’s “100 local heroes”, her portrait hung in the National Media Museum to celebrate Bradford’s centenary.
She became an expert in tenant participation and her subsequent 20 years in community development and regeneration included working as an adviser to a range of government departments and research bodies, as well as serving as a board member of the Housing Corporation from 1998 to 2005 – the only tenant actually living on a council estate to be represented on that body. She was also a member of the Cabinet Office’s social exclusion unit policy team on neighbourhood management.
Before her death Yvonne managed to finish her memoirs, entitled Black Sheep, which will be published in June 2015 with profits going to charity.
She is survived by our mother, by myself and seven other siblings, by Paul and by Rebecca, for whom she spent many years searching. It was a huge source of comfort to Yvonne that she finally made contact with her daughter three weeks before she died.
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