Karen Buck MP, claims City Hall chiefs are trying to ‘squeeze poor out’ with housing policy, with a return to 'slum landlordism'
Published: 5 March 2010
BY JAMIE WELHAM
TORY housing policy that pushes homeless families into the private sector could mark a return to “slum landlordism” of the 1950s, Labour MP Karen Buck warns.
Ms Buck, who represents Regent’s Park and Kensington North, said the current housing situation in Westminster offers the council “no incentive” to provide social housing to the neediest, predicting worse to come, should the Conservatives take control of government after the general election.
The warning comes in the wake of months of fevered debate at City Hall over future social housing policy.
Despite promises to safeguard the borough’s social housing stock – already addled by some of the severest overcrowding in the capital – some subsidised units in new-build projects will be set aside for middle income families under plans to create “mixed communities”. Critics have dubbed the plans “council houses for middle classes”.
While Ms Buck admitted common ground over the importance of mixed communities, she said Westminster Council was in effect trying to “squeeze poor people” out of central London at a time when it doesn’t have enough social housing.
The council has hit back at the claims, branding them irresponsible. City Hall’s housing chief Philippa Roe said plans to start “the biggest affordable housing building programme” since the 1950s was evidence to the contrary.
But Ms Buck said: “The Tories will not grant secure tenancies to new tenants, that is on the record as a policy.
“Given the very high turnover of tenancies that we have in social housing, particularly in London which has a very mobile population, we are already starting in day one a swift process of people moving into very insecure accommodation.
“At a local level, Westminster Council, who are very influential in the national Conservative Party, want to discharge their duties to homeless households into the private rented sector. Those two policies alone are sufficient to turn the clocks back to a time when the most needy and vulnerable households, very much the case in the 1940s and 1950s, would find themselves in the private rented sector.
“Now that does not in itself guarantee that you are back to slum landlordism, but what it does mean is that some of the worst conditions are in the private rented sector and we are going to, under these policies, see the most vulnerable people put there.
“There is a lot of common ground around the concept of mixed community. We are all in favour in mixed communities. Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, places like that, which have a very high level of social housing, I think it’s right that they want to attract middle income families through shared ownership.
“But what that means is Hammersmith, Harrow, Westminster, Ealing.
“These are the boroughs, that should have their share of social housing. In fact what we’re seeing in these Tory boroughs, squeezing or trying to squeeze, their share of poorer families out of the area. I have no doubt there are political motives behind that kind of thinking.”
Councillor Roe said: “The notion that we are trying to squeeze poorer families out of the area is ludicrous. It is abundantly clear in our plans to help many families in Westminster, many of them overcrowded, that we are in fact planning to increase the number of affordable homes in Westminster.
“In fact, very shortly we will be starting on site in phase one of our ambitious plans to build more than 500 new homes across Westminster, the biggest affordable housing building programme we have undertaken for more than a generation.
“Second, in a city as crowded as Westminster, where demand for social housing invariably outstrips supply, it is inevitable that we will need to rely on the private sector to house some of our residents in good quality temporary accommodation.
“Lastly, tenancy legislation is ultimately set by central government and we abide by these terms. There is nothing in our housing policies that seeks to remove secure tenancies.
“This unnecessary scaremongering does not improve social housing in our city, but rather detracts from all the good work that is being done by both the council and local residents to improve the communities they live in.”