Tagged with council housing

Housing is now financialised, like the rest of market capitalism

Green plastic monopoly houses, by 123rf.comThe enforced sell-off of housing association homes, at the same enormous discounts as under Right to Buy (£70,000+ for a flat and up to £102,000 for a house) is driven by the two Tory goals, not only to act as bribes for voters at election time, but also to bring homes as an asset into play in the private market.

Implicit in that goal are two other Tory presumptions. One is that rents should also be determined by the private market, and the euphemism of ‘affordable rents’ is simply a con to distract from the truth that such rents are a teeny-weeny bit below market rates on their way to reaching full market levels. The other is that while tenancies are in principle inferior to ownership, Council tenancies which charge a ‘social’ rent of around half of market rates are anathema. Council tenants, like scroungers in the Tory panoply of poisonous misrepresentation, are pampered, not taking responsibility for their housing, and needing to learn the benefits of individualism. Continue reading →

Is the home ownership model outdated, and ready for the dustbin of history?

The Peckwater Estate, Kentish TownLet us set the scene. You’re a Labour government, it’s 2015, and you’re tasked with tackling economic instability, and health and social problems on a scale not seen in living memory. You need a grand idea, a pillar of policy that states your long term vision, that gives everything you do afterwards solid foundation, and solves a broad range of social problems economic problems.

That centre-piece must be housing. From everywhere from the 20-something in the street, to the floor of TUC conference or what the Guardian calls the “defining economic issue of our time”, a radical housing policy can be One Nation Labour’s solution to inequality, social inclusion and economic stagnation. Just as ‘Education Education Education’ was to New Labour. Continue reading →

‘Right to buy’ has brought Rachman back from the dead

house of cashSince the 1980s, when Thatcher introduced the ‘right to buy’, some two million tenants of council houses/flats have bought their homes, aided by discounts of up to £60,000. The market, however, has its own way of working. Instead of producing the acclaimed ‘property-owning democracy’, it has resurrected the evil practices of the 1950s and 60s. Practices made notorious by the exploitative Notting Hill landlord Peter Rachman.

In London, over a third of ex-council homes are now owned by private landlords, and privately let at rents of around £230 a week more than council rents. The landlords who have bought up homes from the original ‘right to buy’ tenants now have the opportunity to exploit many would-be council tenants who have been forced into the private rented sector by the sharply dwindling supply of council homes and the lack of build of adequate social housing. Continue reading →

Eviction is the weapon of choice against the poor

We have now come full circle on housing. After the Second World War a massive building programme for social housing was launched by the Attlee Government and continued by Macmillan through the 1950s.

Thatcher began to unwind this process in the 1980s by drastically reducing local authority house-building from 200,000 a year to just 30,000 a year by 1990, and by inaugurating the sell-off of Council housing through the Right to Buy Act of 1985. Continue reading →

Lying about homelessness isn’t the main scandal

It’s bad enough that Ministers repeatedly lied in concealing their predictions about the growth of homelessness due to their own measures. But what matters a lot more is what’s going to be done to avert potentially the worst social crisis in Britain for decades. Having to subsist on poverty rations is dreadful, but not having a home at all is worse still. And the numbers are set to rise dramatically: the 23% rise in homelessness over the last year (with applications actually doubling in some areas in London over the same period) is just the tip of the iceberg, reflecting only the impact of the financial crash in 2008-9. It doesn’t yet reflect the impact of public spending cuts starting 3 months ago, nor of the housing benefit cuts kicking in from January next year. That could well push the homelessness total, currently about 80,000, to double or more. How can that be prevented? Continue reading →