Contempt for workers

Published: 27 August, 2010

• I HOPE David Collins feels better after having got his outburst off his chest (Is a home for life right? August 20).

Council accommodation is not “subsidised” by others living in Islington.

Council rents are more than adequate to pay for homes’ maintenance and repair.

The trouble is that the council collects all the rents but then has to hand them to the government, which only gives back a part to the council.

He implies that thousands of council tenants are ignorant, lazy, workshy people with too many kids.

This is a gross distortion.

How does he suppose the necessary basic work of society gets done each day? Who cleans the streets, provides water, gas, electricity and drives public transport except working-class people?

Their council home is for life and should remain so.

Fortunately, other people living in Islington haven’t got the same contempt for the working class.

I suggest Mr Collins gives up his home and moves elsewhere in the country where, no doubt, he will be much happier.

P WAGLAND
Brecknock Road, N19

• WHAT Ken Livingstone doesn’t mention in his recent posturing (Beware Tories’ ghettos for the rich, August 13) is that the recent proposal to end security of tenure for new council tenants was originally suggested by a former Labour housing minister and that in London social cleansing is formalised in the London Mayor’s development plan; his still being current.  

As part of putting his plan together, Mr Livingstone commissioned a study to assess Londoners’ existing and future housing needs, taking into account what people could afford.

However, he knowingly set annual market-housing targets at a higher level than the study said was needed – at 50 per cent rather than 35 per cent – and much lower than needed for social-rented housing, at 35 per cent rather than 58 per cent.

Councils enthusiastic about the project have consistently over-met market-housing targets for the benefit of a minority and under-met those for social-rented homes, needed by a majority.

In Islington, more than double the target for market housing, three times that actually needed, was built over the last three years.

Over the last eight years, London-wide, less than a third of the social-rented homes needed have been built, resulting in a 50 per cent increase in the number of families languishing on housing waiting lists.

Working-class families being forced to the outskirts of London and into over-priced private rented homes is a damning testament to Mr Livingstone and the Labour Party, which we can only expect to be continued.

It is sleight of hand to report otherwise. 

PHIL COSGROVE
Finsbury estate, EC1

• THOSE of use who live in social housing know that security of tenure is its bedrock.

Tenants have a right to feel secure in their homes. Secure social housing tenancy helps residents find work.

Ending security of tenure has the potential to undermine progress made to integrate housing, health and social care services.

It will weaken community cohesion.

It will permanently enshrine the stigma of social housing.

It will send a message to social housing tenants that their status is only temporary and that therefore the “big society” is not for them.

And it will send a message to social housing tenants that if they better themselves they will lose their homes and their communities.

Tenants agree that the key issue is the shortage of affordable housing, but ending security of tenure would not make any significant amount of social housing available to tackle the problem of homelessness and overcrowding.

CLLR LORRAINE CONSTANTINOU
Lib Dem, Hillrise

• FOR the Prime Minister to suggest that security of tenure for social housing should be ended shows a sinister undertone of a policy that will penalise hard-working tenants and pensioners.

It will divide communities and force people out of the place where they were born and bred.

Forcing people out of their homes when they have won a hard-fought-for pay rise would be totally unfair.

CLLR TROY GALLAGHER
Labour, Bunhill