Housing for the "working class"

Early evening visit to look at the exterior of Goldington Buildings, some of the earliest social housing in north London (built 1902).  A carved inscription proclaims that this is housing for the "working class" - presumably this needed stating as the quality of the architecture is equal to the contemporary mansion blocks going up in London for sale to middle class professionals.  The architect was Keith Downes Young who also designed the impressive Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

The bedroom tax

There is currently a lot of ill-thought blather from the left on the topic of the so-called "bedroom tax" or spare room subsidy.

Dr Eoin Clarke (blogger at Green Benches and founder of the think tank Labour Left) is typical of the agitators trying to spin the argument that the "bedroom tax" is "another poll tax".

However in their eagerness to condemn Coalition policy these lefties are revealing a number of contradictions in Labour's attitude towards social housing.

Council housing was originally envisaged to provide housing for working class families. 

Here we see Independent columnist and Labour activist Owen Jones talking about the origins of council housing ("village" communities reproducing Mrs Gaskell's Cranford even in the form of the Watling Estate in north London).

He castigates "Thatcher's ideological war on council housing".

But is it not a fact that the council housing of Nye Bevan's vision is no longer fit for purpose? - in which case a rationalisation of the stock is long overdue.

Originally the bulk of social housing was intended for families, typically two parents and two children.  Therefore three-bedroom council house properties were the norm.  There was some provision of one-bedroom and two-bedroom properties, but these did not really address the needs of society at that time.

Sixty years later the nature of society has changed.  And changed one has to say due to liberal social pressures - divorce is easy and commonplace; the percentage of single parents is increasing rapidly; "alternative" lifestyles are now unexceptional etc.  The result is that the social housing envisaged by Nye Bevan no longer matches the current and increasingly atomised structure of society.

There are two ways forward.

Either reconfigure society back the way it used to be - promote the idea of marriage by recognising it in the tax system; tighten the divorce laws (especially where couples have young children); encourage extended family life with different generations living together etc.

Or accept that with the liberal atomisation of society must come a realistic realignment of social housing provision in which the old three-bedroom family-style council houses are sold off (validating Margaret Thatcher's policy!) and are replaced with single unit accommodation (but please not in modernist barracks of the kind favoured by Rowan Moore).

The left cannot have it both ways.  Either social housing must reflect society or society must reflect social housing.  Therefore the bedroom tax (I am not afraid to use the expression, it is quite accurate) is the sensible way forward. 

However the policy should be modified to allow tenants with spare bedrooms a choice.  Either pay the supplement for extra bedrooms or release spare bedrooms back to the local housing department for reallocation to single households on the housing waiting list.  This would have to be done with sensitivity, and might mean a bit more work for housing departments, but we cannot go on living in a society with socially-liberal lifestyles and paying for a socially-conservative public housing stock.

Social housing - 5

• Does the Labour Party deny that the transfer of social housing to Housing Associations was a covert exercise in privatisation?

• The boards of Housing Associations are too often made up of time-serving placemen.

• Was the transfer of social housing stock to Housing Associations a requirement of "convergence" of social housing across the EU? (in which case socialists such as Owen Jones need to stop wittering on about more council housing as it is not going to happen while we are in the EU).

• The transfer of social housing to Housing Associations has dissipated democratic control over a fundamental aspect of the welfare state, and yet no-one seems to be protesting about this.

• Personally I would like to see government subsidy of local authority social housing programmes - collateral for these subsidised loans would be the housing stock itself (which would appear on the Treasury balance sheet as an asset).

• By directly intervening in the provision of housing a Conservative government can socially-engineer the strengthening of family units (architecture is influential in moulding the mentalité of demographic groups - there is strong reason to believe that if you put people in a middle class environment they will start to behave in a middle class way).
  

"Majority believe UK has a housing crisis but nearly half don't want new local homes"

The 24dash website (for social housing news) reports an Ipsos Mori poll just published revealing that "majority believe UK has a housing crisis but nearly half don't want new local homes".

This is of course a veiled attack on "nimbyism", which is itself an oblique attack upon rural Conservatives.

It is surprising that 24dash can talk about a housing crisis and not refer to the rising population crisis.

If there are three million more people in the country since 1997 due to inward migration there are also three million more people being housed, using water, driving on the roads etc.

But if you point this out you will be called a racist (which is the standard technique the left uses to shut down a conversation).

"majority believe UK has a housing crisis but nearly half don't want new local homes".

The "bedroom tax"

Listening to the reports of the "bedroom tax" proposals on the Today programme this morning, I was surprised that no-one mentioned a fairly obvious (to me) solution:  allow tenants of social housing to sub-let spare bedrooms.

This would give an additional source of income to households faced with the "bedroom tax" and also help solve the housing problem for homeless individuals.

I think the income from rented rooms is tax free (I'm not sure on this).

Of course, I know tenants are sometimes messy, noisy, demanding, take things that are not theirs, disappear leaving rent arrears, cause damage etc.  But equally they can be friendly, helpful, resourceful.  Sub-letting can be restricted to only those rooms specifically liable for the "bedroom tax".

It will also be interesting to see social housing tenants, long persuaded by the left that they are "victims" of society, become evil rentier landlords (to use the terminology of the left cf Owen Jones et al).

Social cleansing at the old Heygate estate

It is important, when considering this Independent article by Charlotte Philby about social cleansing at the old Heygate estate to remember that this is being done by a Labour council and the old residents were moved out in 2010 under a Labour government.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/15bn-revamp-of-sink-estate-reveals-social-cleansing-plan-8482307.html

They did the same at the Woodberry Down estate in Hackney.

Labour has turned against the working class.  They have become a centralised party, recruiting directly and deciding policy at the centre.  They only really represent themselves now (a small self-perpetuating political elite that uses "Labour" as a concept-free brand name).

Tim Bale's article just published on the Progress website is apt - particularly the last paragraph (Tim Bale is professor of politics at Queen Mary College, University of London):  http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2013/02/06/campaign-in-prose/

http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/blog-post_28.html
http://afroml.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/elephant-castle.html

Social housing - 4

Does the model of Housing Association social housing still have credibility in an era of very low interest rates - councils would be able to finance new council housing through long-term borrowing at very low rates.

Social housing needs to be devolved down from central government to local government, but it will mean the end of central responsibility for providing accommodation to families in need (this would have to be done locally).

By pushing through the stock transfers of social housing the New Labour government undermined (perhaps sabotaged) one of the key aspects of the 1945 welfare state.

Social housing - 3

It is likely that a new form of council housing needs to develop, linked to specific objectives in terms of social reconstruction, provision of essential-worker accommodation, and individual "redemption".

In many ways the Housing Association experiment has been a failure, breaking the connection (which had become increasingly tenuous as a result of central government diktat) between local taxpayers, local people in need, and local social housing.

The question needs to be put to all three major political parties:  what is your policy towards the non-profit housing sector?

Housing Association boards have often lacked the experience and the expertise to manage estates at a level that is more than just adequate - Labour is responsible for this failure.

Social housing - 2

The transfer of social housing to housing associations has removed the direct link between local political consent for social housing and the management of the estates.

PFI has further complicated issues (instead of allowing councils to finance new social housing by borrowing against the asset value of the estates they previously owned) - New Labour should be held responsible for this development.

The transfer of council housing to housing associations has resulted in control over social housing being exercised by unelected (and perhaps easily manipulated) quangos.

It is the New Labour policy of transferring council estates to housing associations that has resulted in significant erosion of the national stock of social housing.

Social housing - 1

Social housing is a relatively direct and straightforward way to instill ideological values into a demographic (particularly a failed demographic such as the so-called "underclass").

Margaret Thatcher carried out the process in reverse when she allowed social housing tenants to become property-owners at a subsidised cost.

Social housing represents an under-utilised mechanism to reform individuals and families.

"If you wish to control a section of society control their housing" - VS.