The Death of Social Housing

It seems that not everyone is as dismayed as I am at today's announcement by Tory Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, that the statutory homeless and vulnerable will be forced into high cost, insecure, unregulated private rental accommodation.

Rachman may be dead but his spirit lives on amongst those minority of criminal landlords who just see the homeless as cash cows to be ruthlessly exploited.

Not only that but we now find that tenants may be evicted from their homes if their incomes rise during their new fixed term tenancies.

So - no more mixed communities then; just ghettos of the disabled, the unemployed and the  poverty stricken.

To complete the misery check out Hammersmith & Fulham Labour Group Leader, Stephen Cowan's report on the future "Housing Benefits Homeless Tsunami?" here

Last month I blogged about the End of Social Housing here following the decision to end capital grants for new build and instead depend on near market rents for funding.

Today though is definitely its death nail. We will have to campaign hard for its rebirth.

Tory housing claptrap and myth: young women become pregnant to get a Council flat

Yesterday morning I had the misfortune to listen to Andrew Pierce from talk radio show "LBC" pretending to be a journalist and  “interviewing” Tory Housing Minister Grant Shapps at their conference. Andrew had previously expressed his expert view that since he was brought up on a Council estate in Swindon he knew “for a fact” that girls would get deliberately pregnant to get a count flat.  How he actually knew this “fact” he kept to himself. 

He then spoke to Shapp and his first question was the Sun pub bore favourite about all these scroungers getting large amounts of housing benefit to live in London.  I thought for a moment he was going to ask about the 82,000 Londoners facing eviction from the recently announced cuts.  That moment obviously passed quickly.  Then a question on the usual prurient middle class hobby horse about young girls getting pregnant solely to get a Council flat and what-is-Shapp-going-to-do-about-it. 

My father died a Council tenant and my mother is still a housing association tenant.  Members of my family live and have lived in public housing up and down the country,  I have worked as a housing worker in Council and Housing Association estate offices for 18 years and I have never, ever known of anyone getting pregnant to get a council flat. 

Admittedly we do not ask as housing officer applicants this question (don’t give Sharpe ideas) but I have never seen or heard any evidence whatsoever.  It is an urban myth.  There will of course be an exception to the rule but the vast overwhelming majority of teenagers (repeat young vulnerable women) get pregnant for exactly the same reason that middle class kids get pregnant.   Inadequate and/or non existent sex education, drink, drugs, trying to keep a partner and sometime wanting a have a baby to love. Add to this mix poverty, inadequate health services and poor schooling and you do get high rates of teenage pregnancy on housing estates. 

But young women growing up on an estate are the first to know that getting a council flat does not mean (unfortunately) you have won first prize in life.  To think that someone would deliberately get themselves pregnant solely to bring up said child up by themselves in a bedsit on the 20^th floor of a tower block is just frankly deluded.

"Why we need rent controls" by Boris sibling and "The Firm"

Inside Housing magazine is running a great campaign against the proposed CONDEM class cleansing of poor people in prosperous and middle class Councils (my interpretation not theirs) by limiting housing benefit for tenants. This will result in mass evictions.  170,000 households in London could be affected (see link below).

This is a really important battle which I hope anyone with an ounce of social conscious will support. Unless we have balanced and mixed communities across London then we will just end up with USA style ghettos which blight entire cities.

What I was surprised to read on Dave Hill’s London blog that journalist Rachel Johnson (sister of London Mayor Boris and editor of “The Lady” magazine) called for statutory controls on rent levels as the best way of tackling high rents in central London!

More power to your elbow Rae and hope you will get Boris to agree!

(Picture is of the newly appointed *Commission only" rent arrears enforcement advisers to Tory Housing minister Grant Shapps)

Notting Hill Strike on Dave Hill’s London blog

On Friday Guardian blogger Dave Hill posted here on the dispute, Notting Hill CEO Kate Davies, her close links with Conservative run Hammersmith & Fulham Council and her partner Nick Johnson who just happens to be the CEO of Council owned “Hammersmith & Fulham Homes”.

Dave ponders on the infamous social housing Toryfest “round table discussion” on the pamphlet “Principles for Social Housing Reform” that took place with Kate, Nick, Stephen Greenhalgh, John Moss and Boris's deputy for policing Kit Malthouse and Tory shadow housing minister Grant Shapps's chief of staff Tim Collins.  This pamphlet described social housing as “barracks of the poor” and urges market rents for all tenants and the ending of security of tenure. Or in other words - evicting Grannies whose kids have left home. Very Compassionate Conservatism.

As Dave says “Conclusion? Don't leap to sinister ones: just because people meet to discuss some wide blue sky idea doesn't mean they all find them practical or beguiling. That said, a powerful constellation of Tories and sympathisers with Tory housing policy ideas - and, UNISON would say, Tory management attitudes too - has firmly established itself in Hammersmith and Fulham - just in case that wasn't already crystal clear”.

Nuf said.

Don't forget to check out "All Together Worse" for updates on the dispute.