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A decent home is a right not a privilege

The obsession with home owning is unsustainable - a fundamental rethink is needed, writes JEREMY CORBYN

The media have been full of stories presenting house prices rises as a good thing.

Property experts have been on our screens welcoming this, claiming it will kick-start the housing market and be good for the economy.

As with most housing stories it ignores the reality of life of millions in Britain for whom the idea of owning a property is an impossible dream. A lottery win might well seem their only hope.

The government is touting its assisted purchase scheme as a solution - yet it includes existing property owners in its criteria, thus making the system less helpful to the first-time buyers it was supposed to be assisting.

So for many the only option is renting. For those lucky enough to be renting from a local authority the housing is - or was - secure and affordable.

The government, however, has other ideas. It says that, instead of housing being based on need, it should be based on market rents.

The Tories and Lib Dems want council and housing association rents set at 80 per cent of market prices and tenancy terms reduced to five years.

Any continuation of a tenancy is to be based on their assessment of the tenant's means. If they fall foul of the assessment they will be forced into the private rented sector or buying on the open market.

The coalition's strategy is to entirely remove the notion of housing as a right and instead make council and housing association tenancy a last resort for the desperate.

This is all a very far cry from the postwar consensus of both major parties. which would vie to be the best at building large numbers of council properties to remove people from the poor-quality, insecure private rented sector and provide them with new homes.

The Thatcher government all but sounded the death knell for council housing, with its right-to-buy policy which allowed tenants to buy their homes at enormous discounts. No replacements were built and unsurprisingly waiting lists grew, council properties crumbled for lack of money to maintain them and the number of homeless people occupying park benches increased.

The 1997 Labour government did reverse the decline in maintenance and the Decent Homes Standard concept was a huge improvement.

However, it failed to build new council homes to replace lost stock and it failed to bring in any proper control of the private rental sector.

Yet the coalition has gone many stages further down the line. Its cap on housing allowance is nothing but social cleansing, particularly for those who privately rent their homes.

This policy, introduced straight after the election, means that in the high-rent areas of central London it will be impossible to live on benefits in the private sector. People who may have lived in an area for years will be forced out.

In every central London borough, the government is achieving what Tory Westminster Council leader Shirley Porter was quite rightly condemned for doing in Westminster in the 1980s.

Anyone outside London who might think that this problem is confined to the metropolis should realise that this is the shape of things to come for the whole country.

Private tenants being forced out of Camden, Westminster, Islington and other central London boroughs is just the start.

The government's attempts to force local authorities to raise rents to 80 per cent of market value and limit tenures has met with some opposition as councils recognise that it would make council housing impossible to obtain, not just for those on benefit but for any low-waged or average-paid worker.

Housing associations have much less compunction and are mostly raising rents to near market levels on new properties and restricting their tenures.

All this takes place against a backdrop of insufficient new build of council houses and rapidly rising prices in some parts of the country, making ownership impossible for 80 per cent of the people in many parts of London and south-east England.

The Tory-Lib Dem solution is to encourage more building for private rent - but with no control on what landlords can charge - as well as some new building for purchase. This can only lead to a new housing bubble.

Essentially there is a need for a totally different approach - to recognise that good-quality housing is a public responsibility.

Children in overcrowded homes become ill and underachieve in school. Poor-quality, damp housing leads to poor health.

Lack of sufficient housing forces many into shelters, hostels or the street. We all suffer from bad housing.

Labour's overriding priority should be to commit itself to a huge programme of council housebuilding with rent controls and lifetime tenure.

It also has to be recognised that owner occupation is on the slide.

In boroughs such as mine, Islington, it is now less than 30 per cent of all households. The private rented sector is now around a third of many London boroughs and 17 per cent nationally - a figure that is rising very fast.

This sector is largely unregulated with many dubious charging schemes and unfairly withheld deposits from largely unregulated agencies.

Next week I am introducing a private member's Bill to the Commons, which, although it has little chance of becoming law, will further the campaign for proper regulation - regulation on environmental standards, much longer tenancies, an end to the inadequate assured short-hold system and an end to discrimination against benefit claimants by some letting agents.

Vital as all this is, without rent control, the private sector will continue to be able to charge "market rents" which often bear no resemblance to the cost of the property or its maintenance.

We need publicly run letting agents that can ensure good standards and security of tenure and ensure that all tenants are charge fair rents.

The whole tenor of the housing debate must change. Housing shortages are contrived to drive up prices for the benefit of a few, while the public sector is forced to step in to try to ameliorate the situation for those who are most desperate. The public sector should not be playing such a passive role. It should be the leader of good-quality, secure housing for all who need it. is the result of the policy direction being forced by Government.

Let us look at the sad reality for those trapped in extortionately priced low-quality housing from which there is no prospect of escape without a change of government policy. And bring that change about.

 

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North

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