One Housing "defends" the indefensible

This is the 3rd recent post on Housing Association, "One Housing Group". First was in August this year in response to their plans to "Shape Communities" while at the same time slashing the pay and conditions of already low paid care and support staff.

The second was early this month about this post by Cllr Marc Francis, Tower Hamlets Labour Party, on housing blog "Red Brick" about "One Housing" going back on a deal made with residents about them having a majority on their local housing management board. This deal was in return for their support for an estate transfer.

"One Housing" have now come up with a rather silly defence of their action in this "Inside Housing" report. They attack the previous Board, Tory Cllrs and the local Labour MP and appear to claim that residents are just incapable of running housing services.

Which must be a bit of a surprise to the many successful co-operative housing organisations here and abroad. 

This is just an excuse. They could have compromised and still had an effective Residents Board but have chosen not to do so.

No wonder many attack Housing Associations as being unaccountable with poor or non existent governance, run in the interests of the senior management executives and their advisers, not ordinary residents.  This may be unfair to some but thanks to the behaviour of "One Housing" (and others) you can understand why many residents and politicians think so.

"Isle of shattered dreams" ("One" Housing Group)

Check out this post by Cllr Marc Francis Tower Hamlets Labour Party on Housing Group blog "Red Brick". One Housing Group is trying to get out of an undertaking it made to residents and the last government to have resident led "governance" on the management Board of its subsidy "Island Homes" in the Isle of Dogs, East London.

This attempt to back track on promises is the sort of thing that gives the whole housing association movement a bad name amongst ordinary residents and politicians from all political parties. Good governance in many parts of the whole so called "not for profit" sector is frankly non-existent. Residents, clients and individual staff have little or no power and many very large organisations are run by self perpetuating oligarchies with no effective accountability or oversight.

While there is still many cases of good practise there is a huge difference between being "consulted" (but - we are going to do it anyway) to being part of the actual management process. You need people on Boards who have a real long term interest in the organisation since they live its homes, work for it, receive its services or are local elected Councillors. They are the ones who can challenge and ask the difficult questions that are needed to be said.

Huge amounts of public money has been spent on investment in these bodies and despite the cuts will continue to be spent on benefits and social care.  Who is making sure that this money is being well spent and that Housing Associations are being properly run? The Housing Regulator is now pretty toothless and will only step in when organisations have already failed and are going to the wall.

Unless Housing Associations get their act together and reform their governance practises and become more democratic and accountable to their stakeholders then they have in my view no long term future. While the Tories will try and turn them into quoted companies (even more of a disaster) I am sure a Labour government will one day have no choice but to get rid of them.

Fighting the Good Fight in Mile End East

After the Forest Gate South coffee morning with West Ham MP, Lyn Brown, I drove over to Tower Hamlets to help out in the by-election in Mile End East (vote this Thursday). The Labour Party candidate is Rachel Saunders and I had been told to make my way to the Burdett Estate.

I drove along St Paul’s Way looking for Labour canvass teams. Opposite St Paul’s school was the Gorgeous One himself, standing on the pavement shouting into a megaphone surrounded by about half a dozen of his diss-respect acolytes. They were huddled around him trying to hand out leaflets to an empty street.

I slowed down and opened the car window to try and listen what he was going on about. I could not make out any coherent statements only incredibly loud ear piercing electronic feedback noises interwoven with occasional barely recognisable grunts. You could not make out the sentences but it seemed to be all about being aggressive, bombastic, bullying and threatening. You could imagine him sneering “We are keeping an eye on you, we know where you live”. What was amazing was how seriously he was taking all this. He appeared to think he was on a podium addressing a packed rally - shaking his arm up and down while vigorously pointing his finger at an audience of no-one. I thought it was all quite symbolic. A little man in the true sense of the word living on supposed past glories in denial of reality.

The rag bag of supporters gathered around him (nearly all white and male) should have been out on the “knocker” talking to local people and trying to persuade them to support their candidate.

I wondered what the SWP would have made of this when they had been in charge of respect. At least they had the sense to know that such prancing about is no substitute for organised and systematic canvassing. Of course, their belief that such actions were furthering the revolution was equally as deluded as George who believed that diss-respect would replace the Labour Party.

I soon joined up with Labour canvass teams. There was a really good turn out by local members and Councillors. I was sent to join a team which included Rachel herself; Council Leader Lutfur Rahman, A M Ohid Ahmed, Alibor Choudhury, Marc Francis, Shiria Khatun and UNISON member Cllr Sirajul Islam with his 9 year old daughter (get them while they are young). Councillor Carli Harper-Penman was out and about with London Assembly member, John Biggs.

From the top of the blocks you could look around and see small groups of Labour Party canvassers wandering around the estate. There was even a balloon stall. Interestingly I saw no Tory canvassers at all. It may appear that the local Tories have something in common with Galloway and don’t want to support former SWP associates?

The canvass itself I thought went well. It was somewhat surprising (I say no more) that some voters said they had been told that the respect candidate was also the Labour Party candidate?

For the first hour or so I could still hear the whine in the distance of the Respect megaphone. Eventually it died away so peace and quiet resumed. Who knows what when people stir up community politics and hatreds, but I have no doubt that eventually diss-respect will also fade away and become yet another weird and wonderful footnote in extremist east end politics.

Meet outside Mile End Tube (there is only one obvious entry/exist) 6pm tomorrow, 2pm and 6pm Wednesday. People wanted all day Thursday. Contact