Elephant in the room is profit (and Labour)

If you want to understand what New Labour Mark II looks like, then goings on at Southwark Council give you a real indication. The south London borough is one of the capital’s poorest. Yet tonight, the planning committee will rubber stamp a £1.5 billion deal with a global property corporation that provides just 71 social rented units out of 2,300 new homes.

Anticipating the gold rush, developers Lend Lease have already started marketing apartments in a tower block that will be built in the run-down Elephant and Castle area. Prices start at over £320,000 and rise above £1 million for flats with panoramic views of London.

“With zero affordable housing of any type, all of its 284 units will be luxury flats for the open market and some with access to a secluded garden on the roof of a 4-storey building beside the tower. We have yet to see the plans for the drawbridge, moat and boiling oil!,” say campaigners.

It is part of the so-called master plan for the regeneration of the area after 13 years of delay. Local campaigners, who have just five minutes to make their objections plain tonight, are bitter about the deal that has gentrification written all over it. About 300 local residents have submitted objections. All have been disregarded.

The campaign group 35 per cent points out that Southwark Council is actually in breach of its own planning policy which would require about 400 social rented units in the scheme. There are properties for rent – but they won’t be affordable for most residents in the borough.

Representatives of local groups who have objected to the plan have published the points they would like to make but can’t possible achieve in the allotted five minutes.  Apart from the lack of affordable housing, they are angry that the scheme is car-friendly and anti-environmental in many ways.

Over 600 car-parking spaces are proposed despite council policy requiring it to be car free. As they point out, the Elephant has the highest possible public transport accessibility with excellent tube, train and bus links so there is no real need for private cars. A new public park will, in fact, be privately-run and managed.

They point out that the area around the base of a tower block “is an example of how the public realm can become marginalized through the impact of tall buildings” and add: “The proposed cafes around the green space may not be affordable to all local people, and will therefore fail to create a truly human sense of place and inclusiveness for the neighbourhood.”

But with thousands of local people living in sub-standard housing, or on waiting lists, it is the housing element that drawn most anger. In 2010, the developer signed a binding contractual agreement with Southwark, which guaranteed that 25% of the new homes would be affordable. Half would be social rented, providing a minimum of 288 new social rented homes out of the 2,300 total. That number has fallen to just 71 – and the council is ready to give the green light.

Even though the viability of the scheme is described as “problematic” in the report to the committee, the council is determined to push ahead. Despite the fact that there is no renewable energy in the scheme, no local jobs target, a reduction in community facilities and scant regard for cyclists, Southwark will give its approval.

The shocking, outrageously commercial nature of the project is right up New Labour Mark II’s street. This is the an example in practice of the “One Nation Labour” that Ed Miliband rattles on about. As Southwark shows, Labour is the developer’s friend first, second and last. It’s a public-private partnership where the public loses all round.

Paul Feldman

Octavia Hill's housing dream turns into a nightmare

Yesterday the great and the good unveiled a memorial in Westminster Abbey to commemorate social reformer Octavia Hill, who died 100 years ago. A pioneer thinker and campaigner, she worked to promote the idea of a collective form of property ownership.

Land and buildings of special beauty, she insisted, should be held in trust, on behalf of the nation, inalienably and in perpetuity. This proposal was enshrined in the 1907 National Trust Act.

But Hill did not confine her concerns to aesthetic issues. She saw how private landowners and the demand for profit rode roughshod over places of beauty as well as the lives of millions of workers forced to live in conditions of squalor. With critic John Ruskin, Hill set up social housing schemes to provide homes for some 3,000 tenants in London.

The 20^th century was to see the rise of mass municipal housing schemes which constituted an alternative to the commercial market. But today, decent social housing has virtually become a thing of the last century.

The glaring problems that Hill addressed, rather than being resolved, are worsening. The National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations providing accommodation for some five million people, reports that a major housing crisis in England and Wales is set to worsen rapidly.

One in 12 families in England is currently waiting for social housing, while homelessness has risen by 26% over the last two years. Social housing stock has plummeted over the last decades as rents and property prices continue to soar.

The cost of privately renting a home has gone up by 37% over the last five years. The result is that 417,830 families presently depend on housing benefit to help them pay private rents – an increase as the NHF points out – of 86% in only three years.

Rising housing costs have a disastrous impact on the lives of millions of people, especially young families. Incomes have not kept up with housing costs with the result that increasing numbers of people who in employment need to claim benefits just to keep a roof over their heads.

A market analysis by Oxford Economics shows that social and public house building is dwarfed by the commercial market: 72,876 new homes were built by the private sector, 43,164 by housing associations and a mere 1,830 by local authorities in 2011-12.

The future is equally gloomy. House prices and rents are forecast to show steep increases. Private rents – already unaffordable for many – could be some 27% higher by 2017.

Perhaps the most shocking reality is the contrast between house prices, rents  and earnings. London heads the list. The average house price in London in 2011 was a staggering £421,395. For a 75% mortgage you would need an income of £90,299 per year plus a substantial deposit. Not too surprisingly, the lowest house prices are in the North-east – one of the most deprived, high unemployment areas of England.

Amongst other proposals, the NHF calls for the government to release more public land for building by housing associations and to invest in more social housing.

But is building on brownfield sites what is likely to be low quality housing while huge numbers of properties stand vacant or need upgrading really the way to go?  Such measures can only be sticking plaster on a huge festering wound. A revolutionary housing policy is needed to end the recurring misery of homelessness, overcrowding, soaring rents and exploitative landlords.

The right to affordable housing must be worked for side by side with, as Octavia Hill foresaw, the protection of open spaces for the appreciation of all. The fight for a social right to decent housing will be central to the creation of an Agreement of the People, which will begin in London on November 17.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

We could all benefit from real housing solutions

The Coalition government’s plan to cap housing benefits for private sector tenants will undoubtedly lead to more homelessness, especially in London. But a lasting solution to Britain’s housing crisis involves more than just opposing Lib Dem-Tory cuts.

Some 4.7 million households get housing benefit (HB) to help pay their rents. The average HB in February 2010 was £83.51 a week. The annual bill for HB is around £16 billion and that is why it is a prime target for spending cuts.

The Coalition is imposing limits on what private sector tenants can claim against - £400 a week for a four-bedroom property and £250 a week for a two-bedroom house. But thousands of properties in London have much higher rents than these.

Shelter estimates that some families could face a shortfall each month of over £1,500. Campbell Roth, Shelter’s chief executive, says: “If this support is ripped out suddenly from under their feet, it will push many households over the edge, triggering a spiral of debt, eviction and homelessness.”

This spiral has, however, been in evidence for some time. And it gathered momentum during the Blair/Brown governments. So we should take New Labour squealing about Tory “savagery” with a dose of salts.

In 2010, there are 800,000 more recipients of HB than there were in 2001. That’s a rise of about 20% in under a decade. The causes are not difficult to establish. About 70% of people claiming HB actually live in council or housing association properties. And the rents for these soared during the New Labour governments.

Blair/Brown set out to bring social housing rents into line with market rents by withdrawing subsidies and dictating to nominally independent housing associations that are dependent on government grants. As a result, more and more tenants had no choice but to claim HB.

With the supply of new social housing for rent reaching rock bottom – and the cost of buying in the capital way beyond most people’s reach – increasing numbers had no alternative but to rent in the private sector. But average rents in this sector in London have increased by 65% since 2000 – far more than the rise in the cost of living.

Of course, the background is New Labour’s obsession with the market and the way it encouraged the bubble in house prices that not only put ownership beyond reach of many people but also led to a rapid rise in repossessions when the crash came.

The real issues about HB is about who ultimately receives the benefit because it is an expression of high rents and shortages rather than a solution. In the private sector it is the landlord/private property owner who get the HB. This group can only be described as social parasites who gain from the misery of others by raising rents to extortionate levels.

In the housing association sector, HB is the income stream that perversely allows associations to borrow from banks to help them fund new schemes. The HB comes from central government, is collected by associations from residents and is then effectively recycled to the banks who have lent against the stock of housing. Amazing but true.

Housing policy clearly requires a revolutionary approach because capitalism has a way of recreating shortages over and over again. In opposing the Coalition’s HB cuts we should fight for:

• the common ownership of land, without which decent housing is impossible
• an end to private landlordism, more in keeping with feudalism than a modern society
• an enforced reduction in existing rents in council and housing association properties
• a massive expansion of high quality social housing at affordable rents
• social ownership of builders/developers and the financial sector
• new ways of transferring homes that ends property speculation.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

How 'queue-jumping' myth is reinforced

The report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) that confirms that social housing allocation does not favour new arrivals to the country nails a myth, although it won’t stop it being repeated. Our question is, however, is who perpetrated this legend and why?

All the evidence points to the New Labour government and the right-wing press like the Daily Mail, which have been courted for their prejudiced middle-class, middle-England voters.

So when you ask how the neo-fascist British National Party is able to use lies about queue-jumping immigrants to stir up opinion, you need look no further than the governments led by Blair and Brown, as well as statements by former ministers like Margaret Hodge.

The figures and facts produced in the EHRC report have always been available. Many of them are held by the Office for National Statistics, others by local authorities.

Yet for more than a decade, the government decided to reinforce prejudice and myth rather than counter it. As the report itself points out, one of the early acts of the New Labour government was to change the rules on the housing entitlements of asylum-seekers.

In 2000, after the implementation of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, all existing rights to housing and all types of benefits were removed, and a new housing and subsistence scheme for asylum-seekers based on dispersal and the use of private landlords, was created. The EHRC report says these policies “fuelled misconceptions” about “queue jumping”.

A notorious voucher scheme was introduced before being abandoned, while the courts eventually had to step in to declare that a refusal to give destitute refugees any help breached human rights law. This made sure that the story repeatedly made its way into the tabloid press.

The report also points the finger at urban renewal policy since 2001, where “community cohesion” has taken on new meanings that place “greater focus on migrants and minorities themselves, and less on all residents of a neighbourhood”. In other words, migrants are made the problem and not part of the solution. It is scapegoating in the name of “integration” and the acceptance of so-called British values, an approach that has marginalised sections of Muslim youth and driven some of them into the arms of sectarian Islamists.

These perceptions were highlighted in May 2007, when Margaret Hodge, MP for
Barking and then a member of the government, suggested in The Observer that new migrants should have less right to social housing than “established British families”. Hodge had said the year before that eight out of ten of her Barking constituents might vote for the BNP because “no one is listening to them”. The BNP made huge gains in the following month’s council elections and sent Hodge a bunch of roses as thanks.

And so it goes on. Government proposals, published as a Green Paper in 2008, proposed amending migrants’ restricted entitlement to social housing even further. Settled status may in future be abolished and instead replaced with a status termed “probationary citizenship”, with no entitlement to social housing and most benefits.

Then last week, in a desperate bid to outdo the BNP, prime minister Brown announced that the government would "reform social housing allocation - enabling local authorities to give more priority to local people whose names have been on waiting lists for far too long". Or British homes for British people. No wonder gullible voters are led to believe that these are major problems in society, when the cause lies somewhere quite different.

Since it came to power in 1997, the number of new homes built for social rent has fallen dramatically, as the report points out, while council homes continue to be sold off. Public investment has been directed towards encouraging “shared ownership” schemes instead. There is an absolute shortage of social housing and this is entirely the responsibility of a government, as is the myth of queue-jumping.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor