FORUM: Bill strikes at social housing heart

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Published: 20 May, 2011
by EILEEN SHORT

MPs have been debating the Localism Bill, which includes clauses undermining secure tenancies and puts the long-term future of council housing finance at risk

The Localism Bill, debated in Parliament this week, is an assault on tenants. 

Tenants and would-be tenants and all who care about housing are determined to see off this attack on secure tenancies, the rights of the homeless and would-be tenants, and the future of council housing.

The Bill would allow councils as well as housing associations to enforce minimum two-year, fixed-term tenancies for new tenants instead of a home for life.

This would destabilise estates and communities.  Council as well as private tenants would be constantly on the move, turning our blocks into hostels and undermining tenant organisation.  

It would create conflict with council officers, and make tenants wary of getting (more) work or letting family members move in (or out) for fear of losing your home.  

What army of modern-day Poor Law Guardians do they think will carry this out?  

So let’s be clear – council tenants will not put up with it.

Politicians are already feeling pressure from tenants. Nearly half of councils say they will not use fixed-term tenancies, in a recent survey (Inside Housing April 28), Liberal Democrat and Conservative-controlled councils are resisting, increasing the divisions within government.  

We need to step up that pressure and heat up the opposition so attacks on tenants and council housing, like the NHS, are grounded.  

Councils would be allowed to restrict access to housing waiting lists. And allow councils to push more homeless families into unsuitable and unregulated private renting.

The Bill also forces through financial reform which will leave each council to stand or fall alone, after a one-off “self-financing” settlement. This builds in inadequate long-term funding and means greater risk for tenants if the local business plan unravels. 

We need these proposals to be kicked out unless they are amended to deliver what ministers promised us: “A sustainable long-term system for financing council housing.” 

We need guarantees of public sector ownership if anything goes wrong.  

Otherwise these reforms, like other government plans, leave us fighting locally while they wash their hands of any responsibility – while walking away with billions of pounds from our rents.

Tenants have long demanded fair funding and an end to the theft of our rents by government. But these proposals, with others pushing new housing association rents up to 80 per cent of market rate, and cutting housing benefit, are a disastrous mess.

They attack a fundamental principle of council housing – that it is available to all, in mixed and stable communities. Thirty years ago butchers, bakers, teachers and posties, working and retired, lived side by side. In some places, despite the sell-offs and lack of new build, we still do.

Instead government is creating the conditions for US-style mass private landlordism, where institutional investors form real estate investment trusts (REITs) owning thousands of rented homes, often in poor condition, and at exorbitant rents. 

Landlords would feed off a revolving door of housing need and insecurity. The low-paid or unemployed would be shifted from one area to another, with no stability for themselves or their children. 

MPs, councillors, trade unions, campaigners and tenant organisations need to stand together against these attacks.  

Camden’s lead councillor for housing says that unless he is forced by law, “we are never going to carry out this ridiculous nonsense of insecurity of tenure” (cabinet in December).  

But senior housing officers say something different. Camden officers say: “The two-year tenancy might work in some situations” and “for families… 10-year tenancies might be appropriate” (response to government consultation, Jan 2011).

Let’s see a clear council resolution ruling out fixed-term tenancies, 80 per cent market rents and evictions.  

The council needs to tell “partner” housing associations it expects them to do the same. 

Councils are being offered cash to approve private house-building, while the budget for new council housing has been cut by more than 50 per cent. 

With more than 18,000 on the housing waiting list in Camden, and five million people nationally, government needs to redirect housing investment into council housing.

Building and renovating decent, secure, accountable and genuinely affordable housing for rent is the only way to provide the homes we desperately need.

Contact info@defendcouncilhousing.org.uk to help.

• Eileen Short is chair of Defend Council Housing