Paul Smith, Author at Red Brick

It seems that the big winner of the party conference season was housing. Among the big stories were Kemi Badenoch’s announcement that the Conservatives will remove stamp duty of primary residences, the Green’s vote to “Abolish Landlords,” not mention Steve Reed’s distribution of ‘Build, baby, build’ caps.

I want to focus on the Green plans. There has been a knee-jerk response on both sides to this proposal with little meaningful analysis. Firstly, it is important to note the difference between the headline and the policy (reflecting the dissonance we see between some newspaper stories and the headlines). As the ex-leader and Bristol Central MP Carla Denyer noted, the policy does not ‘abolish landlords.’ The main thrust of the policy is to expand council housing through new build, buy back and the abolition of the right to buy and to bring in a raft of measures which removes the financial incentive to be a landlord by introducing rent controls, adding national insurance to rental income, bringing in a land tax, changing tenancies so they can only be ended by tenants and ending buy to let mortgages.

The Green Party believes that these measures combined will reduce waiting lists as councils build more homes and squeeze private landlords and landlordism out of the housing market. The objective is clear but is it practical?

I think it is useful to look at the most affordable capital city in Europe with the largest council housing stock on the continent, namely Vienna. In Vienna, the council owns over 200,000 homes (and growing) and social housing is the tenure of choice for the vast majority of residents. However, council housing on its own does not create an effective housing system even here. There are also around 200,000 homes owned by housing association equivalents (which are completely ignored in the Green motion and in the Party Policy set out on their website) and a thriving private rented sector. While someone who has lived in Vienna for two years can apply for social housing, the place they wait (owner occupation is less than 20% of the stock) or if they are living there for a short period, is the private rented sector. There are rent controls on private rentals built before the war but not on newer properties, this ensures that there is still an incentive for the equivalent of the build to rent sector to provide new homes in the city. Vienna’s housing system would not work without a private sector element.

The Green Party website correctly notes that there are over a million households on council waiting lists and the party is committed to building 150,000 social homes in a year (again it is silent on housing associations, although the resolution only commits to finance for councils). The general churn in social housing tenancies is falling behind of demand but let us assume for this argument that it neutral, i.e. that the number of people joining the waiting list matches the numbers rehoused in social housing relets. To clear the current waiting list would be 7 years. Where will people live for those seven years if there is no private rented system, assuming, I think completely reasonably, that they cannot afford to buy.

Where will people who do not qualify or will not be a priority for council housing and who cannot afford to buy live? This includes students, mobile workers, single men, childless couples etc.

While I understand the motivation for the policy, I honestly have no understanding of how this produces a workable practical housing system. If the road to hell is pathed with good intentions, this is that road. In the short to medium term this policy would result in massive levels of homelessness, much worse than now. And as a postscript I would love to know what the Green Party policy position on housing associations is, the current one seems to assume a false dichotomy of council housing (with maybe some cooperative and community led housing thrown in) and private landlords. It is just not that simple.

Back to the Future

As part of Rachel Reeves’ Spending Review the Government announced 25 trailblazer neighbourhoods which will receive up to £20 million of ten years. One of the areas named was Hartcliffe in Bristol. It is an area I know well: I grew up there, lived there for over 30 years and represented it as a councillor for 11 years. The day before the trailblazer announcement, I received a national award for a book charting the early history of the estate, “Hartcliffe Betrayed” which I believe has lessons which the current Government could learn from.

Built in the 1950s and 60s, Hartcliffe was part of the wave of post war housebuilding which is often cited when people talk about the golden age of government achieving over 300,000 homes per year, much of it council housing. Estates sprung up across the country, and our towns and cities expanded to accommodate the new growth. However, mistakes were made: urban extensions were often distant from facilities, poorly served by public transport, with local shops more expensive than the city centre retail they replaced. To speed up development, new forms of concrete and steel construction were employed and there was a switch from building houses to high rise flats to hit the targets. In the case of Hartcliffe ambitious plans for a wide range of community services were shelved or delayed, roads links were downgraded and housing standards compromised.

Hartcliffe was an urban extension planned as a new town. If it had been a new town, it would have been treated far better, as they were much better served by infrastructure, facilities, and even local democratic institutions.

Today Hartcliffe is a community struggling because of economic expediency and chasing housing numbers at the expense of everything else. In recent decades, housing policy has not helped as the council housing which dominates the area is prioritised for the most desperate and marginalised, ensuring that the poverty statistics deepen each time they are measured. Clearly it would not have been allocated funds by the Government if that was not the case.

Following a piece of research conducted before the Second World War by Bristol University and published after, it contained a set of principles which could be applied to urban extensions. Six in total, four were very specific about housing finance of the time, however the remaining four still stand up to scrutiny 80 years later. These were:

“The need for less segregation of estates from the life of the city as a whole”. The main recommendation is to have affordable, effective public transport, giving residents easy access to all that a city has to offer. It also suggests areas should be planned to be as economically and socially self-sufficient as possible with facilities and employment incorporated from the beginning.
“The need for less isolation of the poorer section of the population on the estates.” This emphasises the need for a mix of people with different incomes and not recreating ‘council estates.’ Some on the left argue that all housing should be social housing. Given allocation policies and the demand for housing this would be self-defeating and would reinforce area based stigma.
“The need for more flexibility in fixing densities on new estates.” The garden city model much used in the 30s and 50s is often seen as beyond reproach, however it leads to low densities which can undermine the social and commercial economies meaning that often people are too far from services to use them. Higher densities concentrated on ‘town centres’ should be encouraged.
“The need to encourage self-government on the estates.” New towns tended to have town councils, urban extensions often find their governance centred far away. As we face further local government reorganisation and the combining of county and district councils together, the case for urban parish councils or the equivalent to give communities more control over local resources and decision making becomes stronger.

Too often we ignore the lessons of the past, but now that we are planning for the largest house building programme of a generation maybe it is time to dust off research of the last century to ensure we do not repeat the mistakes of those years.