2005-02-20,+Social+Housing+from+CPB

//**From CPB at:**// //http://www.communist-party.org.uk/index.php?file=newsTemplate&story=63//


 * 17 February 2005**

=What's wrong with social housing?=


 * RAY WALKER argues that Britain's housing crisis will only be solved by a radical rethink of current government policy.**

THE increasing lack of affordable quality housing in Britain is one of the single most important social issues of our time.

The crisis has been made worse by society's perception that owning a home is an indication that we have 'made it'. That we need to work ourselves into the ground in order to buy a house.

In 1872, Engels wrote: The essence of both the big bourgeois and petty-bourgeois solutions to the housing question is that the worker should own his own dwelling.

The use of housing as an economic carrot by the capitalist system is still a major problem today. What is more remarkable is that the problem has been made worse by a Labour government, which is currently attacking the last outposts of a low-cost rented alternative.

It is for this reason that the Communist Party of Britain has designated February a month of action on housing. According to homelessness charity Shelter, around a million British children are currently forced to live with their families in temporary or bad housing. This impacts on their health, education and safety and prospects for the future.

The social neglect that the lack of a proper social housing programme has created affects us all. The results can be seen in every major city.

Thousands of homeless people bed down on our streets each night. Many suffer physical and emotional abuse and are exploited by drug pushers or sexually abused. Many homeless people fled their homes in the first place to escape abuse within the home.

The roots of the serious housing shortage in such a wealthy country as ours lie both in the last 30 years of government policy and corporate greed.

In the late 1950s and early 60s, the large-scale replacement of back-to-back housing with blocks of flats on sprawling estates changed the way that many people lived.

Often thrown up quickly, planned badly and built with poor materials, many of these estates became just as unpleasant to live in as the housing that they replaced. Councils were given the responsibility for maintenance. Inflation in the 1970s led to big rent rises for tenants in council houses and flats. While some local authorities tried to hold rents and rates down and many people received rent rebates, the effect was to drive some families towards home ownership.

When the Tories came to power in 1979, they launched an assault on local authority spending and forced them to cap their budgets, leading to less council money for repairs and maintenance.

Labour authorities were singled out for special attention. Liverpool, Sheffield and some London authorities revolted, but they were eventually beaten down. The government then introduced its infamous policy of 'right to buy'. Between 1979 and 1997, the Tories sold off council houses and slapped restrictions on how local authorities could spend the cash. This put tens of thousands of homes out of reach for poor working-class families.

In recent years, urban properties have been increasingly developed on a part-rent, part-buy basis, but, with house prices running into hundreds of thousands of pounds, this is out of reach for those on low wages. Today, the option to buy a property is out of reach even for many people on a moderate income.

But financial companies have profited massively from the rise in house prices.

Institutions encouraging homeowners to remortgage for that 'holiday of a lifetime' either make big profits on the long-term loan or, if the owner can't meet the repayments or is an elderly person signing up for that 'little bit more retirement income' from their home who then dies, their house will become the property of the loan company. It is in these firms' interest to keep prices high.

New Labour has not met the aspirations of working families or those people who need help as a result of Britain's housing policy disaster.

The same Labour MPs who have stayed silent on this crisis often enjoy the luxury of a town house near Westminster, as well as a home in their constituency.

Campaigning organisation Defend Council Housing (DCH) has built support in the trade union movement and among Labour MPs, tenants and housing activists to fight the government¹s obsession with handing the country's remaining council-owned stock over to privateers.

Currently, tenants are being blackmailed into choosing between privately run tenancies, stock transfer - where control would pass to a private board - or arm's-length management organisations, where the council still has some input. DCH sees this option merely as a stepping stone towards full stock transfer.

If tenants want to remain with the council, they won't get money for repairs and refurbishment. DCH scored what seemed a major victory at last year's Labour conference, which carried a motion calling for a 'fourth option' that would counter this outrageous injustice. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott indicated that this would be looked at positively.

He has since reneged on this pledge. Why? Because, new Labour is obsessed with the dogma of a market approach, something mirrored in its commitment to private finance initiatives and cosiness with big business. New Labour believes that the market can provides all the answers to society. It is not working. The Communist Party sees things differently. A simple three-point plan of action would reverse Britain's housing crisis.

The government must honour its commitment to the Labour Party conference to allow tenants to both remain with councils and have the cash for repairs and modernisation. It must scrap its plans to raise council rents to the level of housing association rents and progressively bring down all rents to the same proportion to earnings as 1979. It must make funds available to build 40,000 homes a year, as recommended in the Barker review.

The campaign for a fourth option will continue, as will the call for the government to use existing revenue and funding - which it refuses to spend - in a way that could allow repairs to all council-owned stock.

There is no reason why the government can't bring the stock up to the standard that it has set for 2010 if it invests in repairs and maintains local authority control.

The pressure must be sustained - there is a real alternative that can turn the tide on run-down council stock, poor housing conditions and increased homelessness.

Economic measures are needed to bring about sustainable housing investment.

But we must also shift away from the ideology which says that everyone has to own a home to be someone of value.

If we take these simple steps, we can bring about healthier and happier tenants and reinvigorate affordable homes, not just for people in Britain today but for generations to come.

END.

Ray Walker is on the executive committee of the Communist Party of Britain. It has produced a leaflet and is inviting party and non-party activists to distribute it throughout the month. Contact the CPB at Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Road, Croydon, London CR0 1BD or phone (020) 8686-1659. Campaigners want to flood the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister with requests for a fourth option on council housing. It can be contacted at 26 Whitehall, London SW1A 2WH or by emailing enquiryodpm@odpm.gsi.uk For further anylsis please also see 'The Housing Question' by Friedrich Engels [|http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/index.htm]