A Day in life: UNISON NEC, Pension meeting on Housing investment, & Chartered Institute of Housing Dinner

A full on Labour Movement Day. A long UNISON NEC meeting (and the rest); then met up with LGPS pension fund officers and fund advisers on possible investments in Housing (see why housing is an investment opportunity as well as social need) & infrastructure followed by Presidential dinner of the Chartered Institute of Housing. Fantastic and inspirational speech by President, Jim Strang, on Housing need and domestic violence. 

CIH Presidental Elections 2012

I've been an (inactive) member of the Chartered Institute of Housing for nearly 20 years and I don't recall there ever being an election for the top jobs?

This year there will be an election for the CIH Vice President between Jan Taranczuk and Paul Tennant. Under the CIH rules whoever is elected will become the President of the CIH in 2013.

I don't think I have ever met Paul who is the CEO of Orbit Housing Association (one of the biggest).  However, Jan use to be a senior Housing Manager in Tower Hamlets and his wife Kathy was my line manager in Bow for many years.  I've never worked with Jan but one thing that did impress me was that he was one of the very few senior social housing managers who still lived on an inner city Council Estate.  They did move out eventually to Kent to be near to family. Jan also runs the Housingstories website.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Don’t do it, Margaret don’t do it.... Inside Housing magazine reports here that Housing Minister, Margaret Beckett, is actually considering proposals by the Chartered Institute of Housing (of all people) to end lifelong social housing tenancies.

I covered this appalling suggestion here last month. The idea is that all tenancies should be flexible and subject to review. So if you are a social housing tenant (an ugly term, I wish we could think of something better?) gets a better paid job or their kids leave home, they face eviction? Leaving aside for now, that this would result in modern day social housing ghetto’s which are only inhabited by the very poor and the desperate.

Now, incentives to those who are on higher earnings and want to buy their own property or for pensioners to exchange for smaller properties when their kids leave home are well worth examining. But the idea that by going on training courses and bettering yourself you then run the risk of losing your home is just daft. Personally I do not want to go to court and evict grannies who have lived in a home for the past 40 years and who just want to spend their last days there amongst their friends and local community.

This is a really silly idea and potentially very damaging to the Labour Party. You can understand the reasons why we need to do something about the chronic shortage of family sized homes, but this policy is just a sign of desperate symptoms not solutions. Can you really imagine how this will go down in Labour heartlands? I can – and it’s all very, very badly.

Mucking about with allocation policies on the margin is no substitute for a serious large scale social housing building programme which also has the added benefit of keeping people in jobs and reflating the economy. Is there any other real solution to this problem Margaret? Come on, you know it makes sense.