The right to decent housing - exemplified by the slogan "homes for heroes" was one of the key pillars of the welfare state. While Margaret Thatcher's 1980 "right to buy" legislation dealt a key blow to this provision, and New Labour's failure to allow councils the revenue for any significant new build was another major problem, what today's Con Dems propose will be fatal if it is not overturned
Council housing hasn't ever provided the right to housing for everyone. In particular, single people, couples without children or those living in non-family groups have rarely been able to accumulate enough points except when they are deemed vulnerable in other ways - or where small numbers have been thrown the crumbs of hard-to-let properties on "undesirable" estates.
Housing associations, originally created in the second half of the nineteenth century as philanthropic bodies, have massively grown in importance over the last three decades as a result of the legal and financial attacks on council housing and today are the largest provider of social housing.
Many housing associations were happy to muscle in when councils sought to transter run down estates to them because of the way money from council rents was stolen by central government; and there is no doubt they are better landlords than the Rachmans in the private sector - and their tenants have more legal rights.
More than two million homes have been sold off under the right to buy scheme. Not surprisingly the majority have been the most desirable properties on the most desirable estates.
Today there is already a serious shortage of housing stock, with around 5 million people (2 million households) on waiting lists for social housing. This is roughly the same number as those currently housed in housing association properties.
Homeless charity Shelter said that more than 71,000 children spent Christmas 2010 in temporary accommodation. They were spending Christmas Day in hostels, bed and breakfasts, refuges and temporary private rented accommodation.
In many of these cases this accommodation will be overcrowded and often badly heated, with no cooking facilities or one burner in the corner of a room. Some properties are damp, many are not particularly clean. People have no choice where they are put and in most cases will probably end up a long way from whatever friends and family they have. No one, let alone children, should have to live like this.
Homelessness is not just about sleeping on the streets - it is also about this experience of temporary accommodation. The trauma of homelessness is partly about the physical conditions in which people find themselves, but also about the sense of insecurity when people do not know what will happen next.
Perhaps the reason that a number of governments have focused on street homelessness and claimed it is something they want to end is that it is more visible to the rest of society than people living in bed and breakfasts. They have also often perpetuated the myth that ending homelessness is just about providing the bricks and mortar. This is not the case in that the reasons that people become - and sometimes stay - homeless are extremely complex. Homelessness can and does happen to anyone and it is often accompanied by one or more other problems - unemployment, mental health problems, domestic violence, alcohol or drug addictions. So ending homelessness has to be about providing integrated services which deal with all these things - but it certainly does need accessible and affordable bricks and mortar as part of the package. What the Tories are doing will make the problem many times worse.
David Cameron promised before the election to 'support social housing, we will protect it and we respect social tenants' rights.' The Conservatives said they had 'no policy to change the current or future security of tenure of tenants'. (Inside Housing, 30 April 2010)
But they now they are ripping up those promises and are pushing through new fixed term tenancies, increasing rents up to 80% of market rents, and cutting TO LEI 197150081 LET • Tel: 0735/217080
15 * Britain housing benefit in a number of different ways. They are also slashing the housing budget by 63%, which will mean 250,000
If they get away with it this will hit the elderly, disabled people, the low paid and unemployed the hardest. Rents, overcrowding and homelessness will rise and it will be a bonanza for private landlords.
Eighty per cent on market rents would price out most of those of housing waiting lists. Market rents, as the National Housing Federation said in their publication "Home Truths" in December 2010 are over 10 times median incomes. The publication also points out that house building today is at the lowest level it has been since the
In terms of the attack on housing benefit, the ConDemns have the nerve to argue that they are doing this to stop unscrupulous landlords charging high rents. This is such nonsense it would be laughable if it didn't mean that people will have nowhere to live. The way to stop high rents is to impose a cap on what can be charged - not what is paid by housing benefit which will just mean that many more private landlords will refuse to take tenants claiming the benefit.
Ministers used a shortened consulta tion, of only 8 weeks over Christmas to create fixed term tenancies for new tenants. The misery all this will cause is endless and there is a real danger it won't get as much attention as it deserves as it comes along with so many other vicious attacks on the welfare state.
As the newly formed campaign Housing Emergency says "Tenants' rights are hard-won - we will not allow this Government to rip them up and destroy our TO LET