Fabric of the community

Published: 12 August, 2010

• SPEAKING about ending lifelong council tenancies, Prime Minister David Cameron says “…it is unfair that people simply stayed for life in the same home, while thousands in greater need could not find anywhere to live”.

Let’s pause for just a moment and analyse his statement. 

It is fair to say that he has clearly identified a problem. 

There are too many people on the waiting list and not enough homes. 

He clearly does not realise, though, that it is a fallacy that the private housing sector has enough of a viable capacity to soak up this demand, freeing up council homes to house the homeless. 

Either that or he is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the wavering Liberal Democrats who put him in power.

I suppose the difference between a Tory and everyone else is that Tories cannot see council tenancies being homes with real people and families which make up generations of communities. 

Force a family to move and one starts breaking up the very fabric of a community. 

And Liberal Democrats will have to search their consciences at some stage of this debate and come off this very uncomfortable fence either to support their Prime Minister or vote him and his ideological attack on communities out of office.
Cllr Meric Apak
Chair of Housing Scrutiny Committee