Thanks to Glyn Robbins for this piece. It’s a write up of his remarks at last night’s Bethnal Green meeting on defending public services. It is a very useful reminder of just how important the issue of housing is going to be in the coming months. Follow the link below for a forgotten musical gem.

I resist being described as a ‘housing expert’, partly because I don’t think you need to be one to understand what’s going on in the housing market – especially now – as the following quote illustrates:

‘The fundamental problem is this: As the housing market has declined, banks holding assets related to home mortgages have suffered serious losses. As a result of these losses, many banks lack the capital or the confidence in each other to make new loans. In turn, our system of credit has frozen, which is keeping American businesses from financing their daily transactions — and creating uncertainty throughout our economy.’

So said George W. Bush on 10^th October, but his succinct analysis didn’t do much to reassure the markets. The New York stock exchange dropped 107 points during his eight minute speech!

As the full extent of the financial tsunami is revealed on an almost hour by hour basis, there are some very important conclusions for the left. This crisis is characterised by the failure of housing policy within advanced capitalist economies. We can no longer allow housing to be treated as a speculative commodity. We need properly panned, well built, secure housing that’s democratically controlled, not left to the whims of market forces and speculation. Now, more than ever, we need council housing.

So where does UK housing policy stand now? Even before the worst of the crash, the government’s target of 3 million new homes by 2020 – 240,000 a year – was way off schedule. The latest prediction for next year is less than 100,000 new homes, the lowest output since the war and this figure doesnt take account of the already woeful under-supply of genuinely affordable housing. Washed away at the same time is the hope that all new homes will be ‘zero carbon’ by 2016. This vital means of improving our environment was never taken seriously by the construction industry and there’s no way they’ll deliver on it now.

There are now 4 million households – at least 8 million people – on council waiting lists around the country. The Local Government Association predicted, several months ago that it will rise to 5 million by 2010. This was based on a prediction of up to 100,000 repossessions a year which now seems highly optimistic.

Last Monday the Mayor of London was told by a panel of self-proclaimed ‘experts’ that he will fail to meet his target of 50,000 new affordable homes a year in the capital. And we should remember that Johnson inherited a very dodgy interpretation of ‘affordable’ from his predecessor. There are 331,000 on housing waiting lists in London, where the number of families in temporary accommodation has doubled in the last eight years. In some places the scale of the housing crisis=2 0can only be described as Victorian. Despite attempts to obscure the true figures, there are at least 20,000 families in housing need in Tower Hamlets, which along with neighbouring Newham, suffers the worst overcrowding in the UK. I have, on several occasions, been in small, damp bedrooms where four children sleep.

It’s vital to repeat that all of these things were known before we knew the true scale of the financial meltdown. Things can only get worse, unless we do something about it.

There are three important lessons for the labour movement. First, the policy fixation with home ownership exposes millions of working families to unscrupulous lending, enormous debt and ultimately, repossession – with all the health and social consequences that entails. Secondly, we can’t rely on the private sector to build the homes we need. Thirdly, the policy of ‘planning gain’ (known as section 106 in the jargon) can’t be relied on as a substitute for direct public investment in low-cost housing. Many local authorities have based their provision of new ‘affordable homes’ entirely on the expectation that developers will provide some sub-market homes as a condition of getting planning permission. But now new developments and the debt ridden building industry have dried up.

These issues point directly to the role of housing associations or ‘RSLs’. Defend Council Housing (DCH) doesn’t insist on distinguishing ‘social’ housing from ‘council’ housing for semantics. Above all, for tenants, particularly those considering or having gone through stock transfer, RSLs mean less security of tenure, higher rents and the loss of an accountable and removable landlord. All the other problems with RSLs that DCH and others have predicted for years are now coming to pass. They have now been outed as private property developers by another name, driven by profit, not housing need. To illustrate this, there are now £1 billion worth of empty unsold ‘shared ownership’ flats and the big RSLs are saying they can only balance their books by selling at the full market rate. RSLs are private companies with little public accountability. Their accounts aren’t fully open to scrutiny, their management boards are unelected and their meetings are held in private. They’re heavily reliant on private finance and exposed to market and interest rate fluctuations. Some are heavily indebted. They couldn’t deliver the homes we need during the boom – what chance have they got during the bust? Despite fostering an image of being ‘local and community-led, they are increasingly part of mega-mergers and group structures. They break their promises to tenants and in the current situation, rent rises and service cuts are inevitable, but this won’t be enough to stop some RSLs from going out of business.

The spivs and speculators have been allowed to run amok for too long, aided and abetted by New Labour. In the face of what I believe will be a depression of unprecedented severity, it is essential that the labour movement campaigns like never before. We need an Emergency Housing Plan to include –

• · A strategy to resist repossessions and bring empty homes back into use.
• · All suitable public land – including the Olympic Park – should be used for new council housing.
• · Existing council housing must meet the Decent Homes standard, with direct government funding.
• · In London, we must step up the pressure on the Mayor to use his new housing budget and powers to build and improve council housing.

We need housing for need, not greed and direct investment in council housing. Come to DCH conference on 25^th November and join the campaign. It seems the government may be thinking this is a good time to drop crap policies. After SATs and 42 day detention, we need to make sure they scrap their failed housing policy and replace it with o
ne based on a new generation of council housing.

http://new.uk.music.yahoo.com/singleVideo/?vid=2162817