"DISTRUST, DISLIKE, ANTAGONISM AND ANGER"

 

 

 Grenfell  now echoes the failings over decades

 Readers of this blog will not have been surprised at this week`s criticism of the Grenfell Tower landlord which is contained in the  final report on the terrible fire seven years ago, pictured below, in which 72 people died.

No surprise because  much of  the  criticism is very similar to the vast range of criticism of housing landlords- particularly the Liverpool-based Riverside Housing Association- that has appeared on this blog for many years.

Let us recall that long standing criticism by Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation which publishes this blog. 

Seven years ago  the blog  post was devoted to the trajedy. The post is reproduced below. It  makes similar criticism about the trajedy with what this week`s final report had to say.

This week`s report says that Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) managed the whole of  the council`s housing stock,  including Grenfell, with duties including repairs, maintenance and fire  safety.

The report goes on:“ From 2011 to 2017, the relationship between KCTMO and its residents was `increasingly characterised by distrust, dislike, personal antagonism and anger.`

"It `lost sight of the fact that the residents were people who depended on it for a safe and decent home.`

"KCTMO `allowed` this relationship with its customers to deteriorate`, which the report said was `a serious failure on its part to observe its basic responsibilities`.

This is what Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation said at the time of the disaster and published in this blog :

" Once again the plight of Britain`s voiceless tenants is getting attention nationwide. This week, Kate Henderson pictured, the leader of the country`s housing associations spoke out saying that these tenants were not really valued and it is time they were.

"Ms Henderson is the recently - appointed chief executive of the National Housing Federation .What she said is almost identical to what the housing minister Mr Kit Malthouse MP said in an interview  highlighted last week in a post on this blog, Community Voice Carlisle.

" Both Ms Henderson and Mr Malthouse agreed that the Grenfell disaster was the key catalyst recently to giving a voice to the voiceless tenants. 

“ `The need for change for these tenants is most starkly exemplified by the lessons from the devastating Grenfell Tower fire `.said 38-year-old Ms Henderson in an interview with the social housing journal Inside Housing.

“ `When I first saw the images of the fire I cried, I hugged my children and I watched it all night. It haunts me and I think it probably haunts everybody working in this sector.

“ `I think one of the starkest things which came out of Grenfell and is coming out of the inquiry now is people feeling voiceless, and that it can’t be allowed to happen again.`

"Ms Henderson has now embarked on a nationwide road trip, meeting housing associations up and down the country.

“ `I have spent a lot of time working with local government. I have gone to lots of events, and I am often the only woman around the table.

“ `In terms of my early engagement, I don’t want to just meet members in board rooms I want to meet residents, I want to see the homes housing associations have built and hear what people think,` she said.

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"She was asked what she would consider as success in her role leading the federation. She said: `The  first thing  is empowered tenants, a change in conversation, which is already happening, in terms of tenants feeling really valued.

"Perhaps Ms Henderson will visit Carlisle on her  nationwide road trip.She might then drop in on the offices of Riverside Housing Association  a giant Liverpool organisation that bought the city`s 6,000 former council houses 16 years ago.

"In the last few months Riverside has been facing the issue of voiceless tenants after challenges from Carlisle city councillors. Councillors want these  tenants to have a say in a new Riverside-city council liaison group.

 "A lot of negotiating took place but Riverside would have none of it. Tenants  are to be allowed  submit items for the agenda at liaison group meetings But  having a say at these meetings is forbidden says Riverside`s northern director Sarah Paton.

"Perhaps Ms Henderson will have something to say about that if she visits Carlisle.

"Riverside`s opposition to a democratic voice for tenantrs  is no surprise.  One of its first acts  on taking over the Carlisle houses in 2002 was to abolish all community groups that were set up by the council. Since then Riverside has consistently opposed any tenants` democracy.

"One group  that luckily survived the deplorable Riverside cull was Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation ( then known as Carlisle and Rural Tenants` Federation) .

Community Voice Carlisle is published by Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation. For information about the federation, ring 01228 522277.

LEGACY OF THE RED CLYDESDALE MINISTER

 

Can Starmer repeat the Wheatley legacy?

This month marks the centenary of one of the most important pieces of legislation in housing history writes Jules Birch in the housing magazine Inside Housing.His article goes on:

The Housing (Financial Provisions) Act 1924 – better known as the Wheatley Act – was introduced by the UK’s first-ever Labour government, a minority administration headed by Ramsay MacDonald that only lasted for nine months. 

 

 A century later, with Sir Keir Starmer only the fourth Labour prime minister to win an overall majority, are there lessons to be learned?

The legislation was the brainchild of John Wheatley (pictured) the health minister and a veteran of Red Clydeside, a series of disputes in Glasgow between workers and the government that started in 1915. He had played a leading role in the war-time rent strikes in the city that led to the introduction of rent controls

He built on the legacy of the Addison Act of 1919 (named after Christopher Addison, the Liberal health minister) that established the principles of council housing, but which was derailed by soaring building costs and abruptly scrapped two years later.

That was succeeded by the Conservative (Neville) Chamberlain Act of 1923 that reserved most subsidy for private housebuilding and only funded council housing where the private sector could not meet identified need.

The Wheatley Act was the major achievement of that first Labour government, but it was born out of pragmatic agreement with building employers and unions, rather than ideology. A long-term council housebuilding programme backed by more generous subsidies would guarantee long-term work for builders, as well as provide homes for skilled workers.

The act set a subsidy of £9 a year per house, with more in rural areas. This was 50% more generous than the Chamberlain Act, but not the open-ended subsidy of the Addison Act, and the contribution from the rates was capped at £4.50 per house.

“The Wheatley Act was the major achievement of that first Labour government, but it was born out of pragmatic agreement with building employers and unions, rather than ideology”

Mr Wheatley himself described his legislation as “anything but socialistic” and said it retained Mr Chamberlain’s subsidy of private housing for sale on the grounds that it was producing homes.

But he also argued that it was “private enterprise that is killing private enterprise”, as suppliers put up their prices to achieve higher profits in a process that “chokes off the little builder who relies on cheap production”.

He went on: “By promoting a larger market for houses, I am creating a field for private enterprise that it could not possibly have in anything but these proposals. It required Labour proposals, socialist proposals if you like, in order that private enterprise could get going again.”

 The Labour government did not last long in that first term and the act never met Mr Wheatley’s original target of 2.5 million new homes over 15 years. However, it still produced more than half a million council homes – half of those completed between the wars – by the time it was cancelled in 1933.

By comparison, the Addison Act produced 170,000, and the slum clearances of the 1930s led to 265,000 homes of lower quality.

The Wheatley Act laid the foundations for the inter-war boom in housebuilding and set the standard model for housing subsidy for the next 40 years. Mr Wheatley himself is remembered in the name of Scotland’s biggest housing association.

Against that, subsidies and space standards were less generous than under the Addison Act and rents were only affordable by the better paid in regular work, rather than the poorest tenants living in the worst housing.

However, in an echo of the case now sometimes made for building expensive homes for sale, the argument was that as tenants would vacate their current private rented homes, that would filter down to others as increased supply reduced rents overall.

“It’s easy to forget what’s been lost in the past 45 years, not just in terms of the Right to Buy, but also the clarity of the idea of council housing as a way of meeting the housing needs of millions of families failed by the market”

So what lessons can be drawn from what happened a century ago?

Circumstances are obviously very different: for all the multiple housing crises we face now, housing conditions were much worse for far more people 100 years ago.

But so, too, was the imperative for political action in the wake of World War I, the threat of revolution and the unfulfilled promise of ‘homes fit for heroes’.

It’s significant that the ideas behind council housing – well-designed homes based on central government subsidy and a contribution from the rates developed and managed by local authorities – were able to survive in a period dominated by Conservative-led governments and marked by two rounds of severe cuts in public spending.

A determined minister like Mr Wheatley could make a difference even in a short-lived Labour government without a majority.

It’s easy to forget what’s been lost in the past 45 years, not just in terms of the Right to Buy, but also the clarity of the idea of council housing as a way of meeting the housing needs of millions of families failed by the market.

A century later we have another Labour government, this time with the second-biggest majority in the party’s history.

Will it remain wedded to market-led solutions, or will the party take inspiration from what Mr Wheatley achieved 100 years ago?

 Community Voice Carlisle is published by Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation. For information about the federation, ring 01228 522277.

 

`LANDLORDISM HAS CAUSED THE HOUSING CRISIS¬

 

`Ban social homes until Right to Buy is scrapped`

Nick Bano, barrister and author says in an article in Inside Housing: “While the Right to Buy still exists and while land prices are so high because of landlordism, it’s kind of impossible and makes no sense to build social housing."

 

 When  Mr Bano released his book Against Landlords earlier this year, it proved controversial across the political spectrum. The article goes on:

The argument that has caused such controversy is that private landlordism, rather than housing supply, has resulted in the housing crisis in Britain. Mr Bano says the  Right to Buy scheme and deregulation of the private rental sector in the 1980s have resulted in a proliferation of private landlords.

There are now 2.5 million of them – one in 21 of the population – receiving a combined £63bn per year in rent. This has resulted in the extortionate housing costs faced by people in Britain today, he argues. 

Although Mr Bano spends his time representing homeless people, residential occupiers and destitute households in court, the book’s arguments followed from the cases he was unable to take on.

“We only do cases that are eligible to be funded, and private rented cases almost never are, because you can almost never win, so I hardly ever represent private renters,” he explains

But even for someone who argues in court for a living, presenting his arguments to the court of public opinion has been a revealing experience.

“I’m only just realising how all this works, but I think some of my statements on building have probably been a bit more strident than my actual views are. They’ve been a bit provocative or they’ve been misinterpreted,” he says.

He wrote an article in The Guardian before the book was published, summarising his arguments. “I didn’t say we must never lay a single brick as long as we live. We need to keep up with population growth.

When it comes to social homes, Mr Bano argues that supply is an issue, but the solution is not necessarily building more.

“It depends what you mean by supply,” he says. “If the question is ‘do we need to build a lot more houses?’, the answer is probably ‘no’. If the question is ‘do we need a lot more social housing?’, the answer is ‘yes’.

“It’s not the same question, because you could easily repurpose housing into social housing.”

Mr Bano considers many social homes to be playing a different economic role thanks to Right to Buy and the ability of private landlords to make personal profit from homes that were built to be socially productive.

“The state paid for millions of homes in this city [London]. They paid for that once, then it was sold off at a discount. They paid for it again, then they’ve been paying it off in the form of housing benefits. Now they’re paying it off in the form of temporary accommodation rents.

“Soon they will pay for it again, in the form of acquiring back a lot of the old stock.

“Not only has the state spent many more times than it should have on these homes, but all of that money has simply been transferred to landlords.”

Mr Bano emphasises that, without landlordism, that money could have been reinvested in the quality of social housing or in public services.

“I found that I was playing the role of the ultimate nimby, the platonic ideal of an anti-building guy, and in a way that serves a useful purpose. But it wasn’t what I set out to do”

Even if more social homes were needed in Britain,Mr Bano cannot see the point of laying more bricks until the legacy of Margaret Thatcher’s housing laws are undone.

“If I were running a nice council, I would not particularly want to build council housing,” he reflects. “We can see that newly built social houses in Norwich are being sold off after just a few years.

“Imagine the amount of public investment that has been put into that scheme, and it just gets sold off."

Community Voice Carlisle is published by Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation. For information about the federation, ring 01228 522277.