It has been an extraordinary week of goings-on since the news broke that Newham Council had written to organisations as far away as Stoke to try to get homelesss households rehoused.
Grant Shapps was straight on to the airwaves trying to make political capital – pointing out that Newham was Labour and denouncing them for doing this during an election (bizarrely also denouncing the BBC for raising the story during an election period, as if news isn’t news). Labour MP Karen Buck pointed out that Tory Westminster was sending people to Luton, and Westminster Labour Leader Paul Dimoldenberg showed that the Council was working with its Tory neighbours Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham on proposals to send people to Nottingham and Derby.
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Mr Shapps plays politics
If Grant Shapps accuses you of playing politics, you can be sure that he is guilty as sin of doing that himself.
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Siobhan Benita on Housing
If you’re thinking “Siobhan who?” you need to get a Twitter account.
She’s the independent Mayoral candidate who’s won the hearts of many media types over the past few weeks.
I thought I’d take a look at her housing manifesto.
Before I do though, I want to say something about the campaign she’s running.
I had the pleasure (?) of attending last night’s Sky debate between the London mayoral candidates. It may not have been great but it was 1000% better than the Newsnight effort with the awful Paxman. And well done Sky for focusing mainly on policy and starting the questioning with housing (even though they didn’t pick my effort) and being the first media outlet to give housing and homelessness issues some air time.
With such a strong focus on the London mayoral election, it is hard for others standing for election in the rest of the UK to get a look in at present. But there are many other vitally important contests where housing issues will be an important factor. On May 3 elections will take place for 131 English, all 32 Scottish and 21 Welsh councils – full list here.
Birmingham will be a crucial bellwether election, where the contest is close and Labour is challenging the Tory/LibDem Coalition, but even here the media seems more interested in the referendum on whether to have a mayor than it does in the issues that directly affect people’s lives, like housing and education.
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When there's no money
This blog has often made the case for housing investment to stimulate economic growth and boost employment.
Housing, pound for pound, creates a lot of employment and as we’ve said many times before housing pays for itself, even social housing. It’s why I don’t like the term subsidy; it’s investment, which pays back and provides a return (if over several decades).
If policies alone decided Elections, Ken Livingstone would be romping home as the next London Mayor.
Instead he faces a photo finish with Tory Boris Johnson. ‘Look at Boris, isn’t he a laugh’ is no way to run one of the world’s five greatest cities. But his celebrity status only tells half the story: Johnson is a cunning and ambitious right wing Tory who is running an unremittingly negative campaign with such hugely powerful media support that even people on own Ken’s side start to believe some of the things that are said.
Ken has always had an extraordinary ability to define the policy needs of the moment. On fares, he saw that the need in the 1980s was to use spare capacity and get people back on the tube again; by 2000 the need was for massive investment in new services; and now in 2012 the need is to put money back into the pockets of struggling Londoners.
By guest blogger Monimbo
As well as being the catchy phrase that was evidently used on a 1945 Labour election poster, Let’s Build the Houses – Quick! is a new publication by Cathy Davis and Alan Wigfield from Spokesman Books. It looks at the failures of recent housing policy and calls for a massive new building programme from the next Labour government.
Red Brick readers will sympathise with the main line of argument, which is that Labour didn’t build enough social housing, the Tories are doing much worse still and the main component of a sensible housing policy should be to put that right.
Ealing Council should retain its commitment to social rented homes and security of tenure in its own stock. That’s the foremost recommendation from the report of the Council’s Housing Commission, published this week after a year of research and debate.
I often find two opposing knee-jerk reactions to housing when I go to Labour meetings and events. They hinge around council housing – and are lightening rods for other ideological debates.
Some members when they hear people arguing for more council housing and greater power for councils to build homes again, seem to think that this is an old Labour plot to drag Labour back to 1983 and anti-aspirational, left-wing electoral oblivion. Dennis MacShane’s article yesterday implicitly recognises that tendency in parts of the last Labour government.