We’ve heard a lot about families in the aftermath of the riots – issues about parenting, family breakdown, single parents and children who don’t know right from wrong. Breakdown of traditional families, moral decay and social disorder all go together for the right and some on the left too (such as Frank Field).
Life is undoubtedly a lot tougher for children who do not grow up in a stable and loving family. A strong family life is the way that many people manage to deal with and overcome social disadvantage and poverty.
Over 13 years, Labour supported families through maternity and paternity leave, expanded childcare, Sure Start children’s centres and parenting classes – along with some harder measures to make parents more responsible for their children’s actions.
The Tories prefer promoting marriage and the maintenance of ‘traditional’ nuclear families. They had their plan of tax incentives for marriage, until the coalition agreement forced them to drop it.
Government’s can also do things that undermine family life. This government’s benefit policies are providing a compelling ‘incentive’ for families to split up.
The impact of the Universal Credit and household benefit cap may make it very hard for families to stick together. The limit on the total level of benefits a family can claim in a year is £26,000 per year, regardless of the size of the family. It applies to two parents, two children, as much as a single parent and single child or a multi-generational family.
This cap, once combined with housing costs, will force many families into considerable hardship, especially larger families. Many people will move to other areas. Many others will look for ways to get by the area where they live.
If larger families live separately they are far more able to do this.
A family of two parents and two children can claim a maximum of £26,000 in benefit. Should they separate into two household, both parents perhaps finding smaller, cheaper places in the area, the same people are eligible for up to £52,000 of benefits.
It’s difficult to know how people react to poverty and hardship. People are ingenious and look for the gaps in any system to get along. That’s human nature, not cheating – the rich do the same in employing expensive accountants to help them minimise what they pay through the tax system. And, in my view the bonds of family or the pressures of broken relationships, are far more important than any ‘incentives’ right-wing government’s might offer for marriage and keeping families together.
But, I wonder if that great champion of the family, Iain Duncan Smith, has considered how his system provides a considerable pressure and incentive for poor families in expensive areas to split up.
Maybe it’s understandable that people want to lash out after the appalling behaviour of those involved in looting and violence during the riots last week. But there is also a risk of a dangerous authoritarian response. This not only includes proposed changes to the nature of policing that have always been resisted before – bringing in the army, rubber bullets, water cannon and public whipping of members of the underclass just in case they were rioters (sorry I made the last one up) – but also wider and wider forms of punishment such as removing benefits from perpetrators.
Suddenly on Thursday the debate focused on council tenants, as Tony discussed in his post on Red Brick, and the issue is leading the news today. Councils of all political persuasions knee-jerked in favour of evicting perpetrators who are or live with council tenants, and Wandsworth appears to have been the first to issue a notice of seeking possession. Mr Bandwagon himself, Grant Shapps, was quickly on to it, saying if necessary we could have new laws by the Autumn if the existing power isn’t strong enough. In his article in Inside Housing Shapps says: ‘As things currently stand, whilst thuggish behaviour against neighbours or in the immediate vicinity of their home provides a ground for evicting a tenant, looting or other criminal activity by tenants further from their homes can’t usually be taken into account. People who commit anti-social behaviour should feel the consequences regardless of whether their actions are taken within the immediate vicinity of their home or further afield.”
And Mr Bullingdon (did he or didn’t he take drugs and smash places up, I can’t remember?) David Cameron joined in, saying council tenants were subsidised (they aren’t) so they have additional responsibilities to behave. Branding a whole class of people, not for the first time, he said: “I think for too long we have taken too soft an attitude to people who loot and pillage their own community. If you do that you should lose your right to housing at a subsidised rate“.
Simplistic solutions? Bullingdon boys don’t even which end of the broom is up.
The existing law indeed may not give Shapps and Cameron what they want, as the always excellent Nearly Legal website briefed. To get a possession order the landlord will
have to demonstrate that nuisance was caused or an indictable offence committed
‘in the locality’. It is a discretionary ground for possession so the courts would decide on the merits of the case.
In my view the criminal justice system exists to assess evidence and context and impose sentences on those found guilty. The question we have to ask is why the crime of looting a High Street should be punished by removal of housing, but only if the perpetrator is a council tenant? The riots have nothing specifically to do with housing or council estates. Why aren’t we debating removing NHS benefits or free school meals? Or parking permits or driving licences? Or tax relief for pension contributions? Or access to higher education? Or child benefit?
Housing associations seem to have reacted much more sensibly than some councils on this one. Peabody’s Stephen Howlett, said he thought courts were likely to find eviction of tenants caught up in the riots disproportionate: “We want the strongest action to be taken against those involved, but our preference is for the criminal justice system to be the
focus.” The measures risked simply moving the problem to another area, or pushing tenants further into poverty: “These people have to live somewhere, so if they are evicted you risk just exporting the problem.” He had talked to a mother on the Pembury estate in Hackney who was was “terrified that she and her younger child would be made homeless as a result of her 17-year-old who she could not keep under control“. He added: “This is not simple. We have to be very careful.”
The only reason tenure-based punishment has gained traction amongst politicians and some parts of the media is that it reflects pre-existing prejudice that council tenant = underclass = rioter. It is part and parcel of the scapegoating and stereotyping of social tenants in general and council tenants in particular. It often seems to be the case that council tenants are singled out for extra punishment or additional requirements to behave in a particular way. Eviction for anti-social behaviour – not applied to other tenures, not
even to RTB lessees or their private tenants -.was only an acceptable policy because it involved ASB in the dwelling or the locality, that is the place where the tenancy existed, but it is now proving to be the thin end of the wedge.
There is no information that council tenants were disproportionally involved in the riots, so far this is a knee-jerk reaction not based on evidence. From what I’ve seen so far, some were tenants and some weren’t. Tottenham for example is a genuine mixed tenure community with both middle class and working class home ownership and private renting and housing association renting as well as council housing, from which rioters could have been drawn. It would be ludicrous to suggest owner occupied households containing a perpetrator should be foreclosed or lose their exemption to capital gains tax on their properties.
Fortunately Ed Miliband has been taking a more considered approach. I agree with him when he says: “These issues cannot be laid at the door of a single cause or a single Government. The causes are complex. Simplistic solutions will not provide the answer. We can tackle the solutions only by hearing from our communities…… They want us to go out and listen to them in thinking about the solutions that are necessary. Before any of us say we know all the answers or have simple solutions, we should all do so.”
Categories
Evict the Rioters?
A significant number of councils, all of which Labour, have announced they may evict tenants who are found guilty of the rioting and looting over recent days. I’ve picked up Greenwich, Barking and Dagenham, Manchester and Salford coming out with this announcement.
This is undoubtedly a very tough line.
I think tough actions should be taken against those who caused incredible damage to communities, mostly their own communities, across London in recent days. People, even if they face poverty and disadvantage, have choices and responsibilities. The first of those responsibilities is to obey the law.
As Red Brick has constantly argued those who are worse off in society, many of whom live in social housing, are not ‘passive’, ‘impotent’, ‘dependent’, ‘trapped’ but people who shape the world around them, try to better their lot and contribute to their community, most often in positive ways that belie their circumstances.
Occasionally, a tiny minority choose to act in destructive ways and in the past few days, we’ve seen that on an incredible and entirely unpredicted scale.
Poverty, alienation and pessimism about the future are undoubtedly a major part of what has gone on in recent days – and as Steve says condemnation can only be one part of our response. But, for the sake of the many people who share those challenges, but choose not to riot and loot, we must ensure those who have sought to wreck their neighbourhoods face the law’s toughest penalties.
As for eviction, I can see both sides:
Why should those who have committed such grievous crimes against the public realm get the benefit of such a valuable public good, which is in such short supply? There are plenty of others in need and law-abiding who might make better use of those tenancies. And why should people in social housing be subject to neighbours who’ve acted in such destructive ways in the estates and street where they live?
But shouldn’t those who are guilty of crimes face criminal penalties – prison, fines, and community orders? We wouldn’t withdraw public services like health or education and it reinforces the idea that a good stable home is not something that people should have by right, and is of a second order importance compared to healthcare or education. Is it fair that rioting social tenants may face eviction, but those who own their home or rent privately are unaffected?
On balance, evictions are probably counter-productive – the process being long and drawn out and the fact that the rioters will have to move elsewhere in circumstances that may make such behaviour worse and more likely.
Perhaps in this case community orders might have a particular role – so sentences can be carried out in the communities where crimes took place and local residents can see that justice is being done.
Categories
Wasted assets?
Monimbo
Eric Pickles’ latest burst of ‘localism’ is his plan to force councils (and other public bodies) to publish a public register of their assets. Like the requirement to publish minute details of expenditure, this will encourage the press and others to try to catch councils out. They’ll try to find things they don’t know they own or (in the views of the press) shouldn’t own.
For example, already mention has been made of county councils owning farmland, as if his were a horrendous crime. Yet as Steve mentioned in his bucolic Northumberland post, tnanted farmland is profitable and a perfectly reasonable asset to hold.
Yet Andrew Boff, Conservative housing spokesperson in the GLA, says anyone looking at the land owned by public bodies will be shocked. He must be of a sensitive disposition.
I looked at the public assets shown on the DCLG’s map for an area I know well. Surprise, surprise: the council owns several parks and open spaces, a school or two, a library and – yes, shock horror – a house!
The DCLG register is just a trial, apparently. Before being opened to public scrutiny, the real asset registers will have to be consolidated from different records, checked for veracity, put in a central system (standardised across England?) and then kept up to date.
Just think about the implications for housing alone – a council’s (say) 20,000 houses
might well be digitally mapped, but will they be on the same database as (say) the schools? Assets change constantly – for example, as houses are sold through the right to buy. If empty assets have to be shown, will the system have to show every short-term void? In the case of council housing, the cost of doing all this or harmonising databases will presumably fall on the housing revenue account – in other words, tenants will pay from their rents.
Now you could argue that this is all no more than good practice in the digital age, and the more transparent these things are the better. Both are good arguments. But I don’t think
they are foremost in Pickles’ mind. I think he wants to imply that these assets – or a good proportion of them – are being poorly managed or kept empty at the taxpayer’s expense. Then I think he wants another smokescreen for insufficient houses being built.
Finally, if he or his spies in the Daily Mail can find a few wasting assets, he’ll no doubt feel vindicated and might even manage to get a site or two sold on to private builders. Don’t hold your breath though, he’ll be happy if he gets the odd example of incompetence to ‘justify’ the whole bureaucratic exercise.
There are some similarities between what has happened in Tottenham over the past few days and the riot of 1985. Both were triggered by a death during a police operation and a family demanding answers about what happened, followed by a march on Tottenham Police station and people feeling ignored and disrespected. Then, crowds gathered on Broadwater Farm estate which became the venue for the subsequent riot. The riot had nothing to do with the estate, it was about policing, and the location could equally have been Tottenham High Road then as now. But the pressure cooker exploded and the appalling, and I believe still unsolved, mob murder of PC Blakelock cemented the notoriety of the estate.
Talking our way through hundreds of riot police, three of us opened the Broadwater farm Neighbourhood Office at 7am the following morning, dealing with many terrified people.
Teams of council staff arrived spontaneously and began the clean up. Shops and cars had been burned out but there was remarkably little damage to the residential parts of the estate – extraordinarily, the glaziers were hardly needed – although the impact on residents’ morale was palpable.
Local politicians and neighbourhood staff were outstanding in the aftermath, and especially Bernie Grant, who showed enormous courage in the face of a despicable media campaign of vilification. He devoted many years of his life afterwards to making the Farm, and the wider Tottenham area, good places to live and strong communities. He eventually got the relationship between the community and the police onto a new footing.
Everything that has been said about the criminality of the current riots, the appalling firesetting and looting, is fair comment. There are a large number of people, many very
young, who have done very bad things and they should be arrested for them as soon as they are identified. It hurts, but we have to understand that many of the rioters have done this to their own communities; it is not good enough to say it was all done by people from somewhere else.
It will take a long time for communities to recover, but there were signs all over the news today of councils responding magnificently and communities pulling together and supporting each other. I have been struck by the many interviews with community activists and leaders who are stunningly articulate about what is happening in their areas, why things have been going wrong, and what needs to be done. They give the lie to the
many derogatory things that are said about working class areas. In many cases they are already the Big Society but without the resources and wherewithal to withstand the tsunami of post-recession policies that have caused hope and aspiration to evaporate.
A twin track approach is needed. Obviously the police response has to be better and the community deserves to be better protected. Cuts to police numbers should be withdrawn. There will be many operational lessons to be learned, especially when so many communities come under attack at the same time. What is so different from 1985 is the speed with which the rioting spread through so many different areas across London and further. The blackberry phenomenon needs to be understood for the future, the police seemed clueless in the face of it.
But those that can only condemn and talk of clampdowns and state retribution are making a big mistake. Even Mrs Thatcher sent out Michael Heseltine to find out what was happening in Liverpool after the Toxteth riots. Boris Johnson hasn’t got a clue. His one
dimensional response, repeated by David Cameron, about ‘sheer criminality’ is just not good enough, and Ken Livingstone is much more sure-footed and grounded in reality when big issues like this arise.
If it has no other dimension than criminality, if it has nothing to do with economic and social conditions, and policing, why has it happened now? Is it completely unrelated to the closure of youth centres, the removal of EMA, rising youth unemployment, and rising numbers of young people being stopped and searched on the streets, which they see as harassment and disrespect? If poor communities are constantly accused (even by some Labour politicians) of fecklessness, worthlessness (to the point of being told they shouldn’t have children if they can’t afford them) and scrounging, and a feeling of hopelessness is added by the unfair and unequal impact of the recession, is it a surprise that the outcome is a destructive form of alienation that eventually expresses itself in violence?
If bankers ruin the global economy then earn millions in new bonuses, if politicians and policemen are perceived to be on the make (even if most aren’t), if a media empire indulges in criminality as a matter of routine, if we only measure worth in material possessions, we should be traumatised but not astonished when youth also display heartless avarice and grab what they can. Maybe Laurie Penny is right when she wrote in her blog last night that “people riot because it makes them feel powerful, if only for a night.”
For the future, we should take our lead from the dignified comments of the furniture store owner, distraught at the loss of his building, which had served the local community for 150 years, who was right to condemn but also had the perspicacity to ask why, what is it about our society that can make such things possible?
Ed Miliband and Caroline Flint have suggested that being employed should be a factor in social housing allocations. It has been suggested that this is an effective ‘message’ to the ‘squeezed middle’, which I commented on in a previous blog. But, whatever the message it conveys, does it stand up as a housing policy?
Guest blogger Sheila Spencer takes up the debate.
There’s been some debate within the Labour Party, at senior levels, and on the pages of Inside Housing, about giving priority to people on the basis of their employment status, and it seems to me that some people are missing the point a bit. Ed Miliband, for example, has pledged to make it easier for voluntary workers and the employed to gain council housing, to fit with the idea that the welfare state should reward those who contribute. But what about those who can’t yet contribute in this way?
I know that some councils have already adopted this policy: Manchester, for example, gives extra priority on the basis of someone in the household being in work or contributing
to their community. Manchester’s allocations policy says that the idea of this is to encourage people to access work. But the person in work has to be employed for 16 hours or more, and must have been in work for at least 9 months in the last year – so it is not
encouraging people to move into work, just giving priority to those who already have work.
It seems to me that this puts those who are out of work and without anywhere to live at a considerable disadvantage. If you are homeless, you are fairly unlikely to be able to get a job until you have an address; and if you are living in temporary accommodation, in most cases the housing and support costs stop people from being able to take on a job whilst they are living there. So this policy puts an additional barrier in the way. It’s really
a Catch 22 – you don’t have priority to get rehoused because you’re not working, but you can’t apply for work because you won’t be able to afford to have anywhere to live in the meantime.
There is one glimmer of light for people in temporary accommodation: many people are now getting involved in some way as a volunteer, as part of “meaningful activity” and tangible support to move on with their lives. But Manchester’s scheme seems to restrict the community contribution to the area you want to be housed in – expecting, I would guess, that this is as part of a neighbourhood or community group there. Again, this could exclude people who are not yet part of a community.
I prefer the schemes which give people an incentive for looking for work by awarding priority for rehousing, or priority for particular places, to those who have pledged to get into work, or training or education once they have somewhere to live, and which supports them to do so. So those who have only just got themselves into a position where they can look for work are able to do that with a steady home to live in. Isn’t that a responsible way
to look at offering social housing? And how can we justify rewarding people who take responsibility for their lives whilst excluding those at the bottom of the heap, and in effect, taking on policies which keep them there?
A holiday in Northumberland normally involves castles.
This year’s selection included Bamburgh (the most dramatic), Lindisfarne (the most beautiful), Dunstanborough (the most ruined), Chillingham (the most eccentric), and Alnwick (the most Hogwarted).
Alnwick castle is the home of the Duke of Northumberland (and his forebears for 700 years). Alongside the fabulous State Rooms – I thought one woman was going to faint when we were told in the dining room that the Queen had recently lunched here with the Duke and Duchess – visitors have the opportunity to watch a video explaining the Duke’s views on Inheritance Tax. He doesn’t think much of it. But I think his progeny will survive on the post-tax pickings of “a growing international commercial property portfolio which is centred on the North East, including over 100,000 acres of land and more than 100 let farms, a large residential portfolio, a number of historical assets including Syon House in London and the Albury Estate in Surrey as well as fine art and treasures, mineral rights, sporting and leisure interests” as the Northumberland Estate website explains it.
An alternative view of Northumbrian life can be found at the fantastic Woodhorn Museum just outside Ashington. In addition to its exhibitions on coal mining and working class history, the museum is home to the permanent picture collection of the Ashington Group, known as the Pitmen Painters, who captured every aspect of life above and below ground, depicting living as well as working conditions.
The exhibition of union banners is fascinating, although we were struck by the banner of the Ellington Branch of the Northumberland Area of the National Union of Mineworkers. On one side is a picture of crowded slum pit housing with the slogan ‘Close The Door On Past Dreariness’. And on the other is a picture of a modern housing development, houses with gardens on a tree-lined street, with the slogan ‘Open It to Future Brightness’. That just about sums it all up.
Alnwick Castle followed by Woodhorn Colliery Museum offers such stark contrasts it really makes you wonder why the class war never caught on.
Image from a picture by Norman Cornish, included in an article by Martin Wainwright, Guardian website, October 2006.
- Lindisfarne community prioritises affordable homes
As you arrive into the village from the causeway out to Lindisfarne, there is a ‘welcome’ notice board. It records the history of the island in timeline form. All the key dates are there, the arrival of St Aidan in 635AD, the death of St Cuthbert in 698, the arrival of the Vikings in 793, and all the rest.
And, given equal status, are the key dates for ‘affordable housing phase 1 completed’ and ‘affordable housing phase 2 completed’.
Simon Schama might not agree, and David Starkey certainly won’t, but that’s what I call a balanced view of history.
Like other areas in rural Northumberland, Lindisfarne has suffered from rocketing house prices, driven by the second homes boom, and rapid rent rises, driven by shortage and competition from the holiday lettings trade. Local people could not afford to buy or to rent on the island, the school closed, and the traditional community was dying. Showing great foresight and determination, the islanders formed the Holy Island of Lindisfarne Community Land Trust (CLT), which raised charitable and community donations to fund the building of a small but vitally important number of homes for social rent.
Later, other small developments were financed by the Housing Corporation/Homes and Communities Agency. The landlord of the Crown and Anchor pub put it simply – “Getting one of these new homes means we’ll be able to stay put, carry on running the pub and be a part of the local community.” The homes will be available for low rent occupation in perpetuity, irrespective of future land value rises.
This inspirational story contrasts with this week’s report from the Countryside Alliance concerning the death of rural communities around the country caused by the shortfall in affordable homes. According to the group, almost 80,000 affordable homes are needed each year in rural areas but just 17,000 were delivered in 2010/11.
The report, ‘The critical shortfall in affordable rural housing in Britain‘, argues that rural housing remains less affordable than in urban areas due to average wages being
£4,655 lower than the national average.
As the Lindisfarne example shows, to survive rural communities need to prioritise low cost housing for rent. As in the cities, the market simply cannot do the job that communities need without positive intervention.
After a dearth of posts on my part and leaving it up to Steve to keep the flag flying, you now get two in one day.
Here’s a piece that just went up on the excellent Southern Front, looking at the impact of respossessions in marginal parts of the south and east:
Repossessions are beginning to hit the headlines again and in the south, Britain’s repossession hotspots read like a list of key marginals Labour has to win back. Research by Shelter shows that among the worst places for repossessions are Thurrock, Harlow, the Medway Towns, Swale, Milton Keynes, and further north, Corby and Northampton.
Those facing repossession are typically families on middle and low incomes. They are often younger families who stretched themselves to buy during the mid-2000s and do not have much of a cushion to absorb a loss in income or an increase in their mortgage rate. Whether you want to call them the squeezed middle, C1s and C2s, or ‘Squeezed Strugglers’, they are some of the people Labour needs to win back to regain the seats we need in the south. Many are facing great insecurity and seriously strained finances.
The repossession rates are just the tip of the iceberg. Up to 12% of mortgages are in ‘forbearance’ – that is, banks choosing not to repossess even though homeowners are behind in their payments. Below that are millions of homeowners with incomes at breaking-point – just about covering their mortgages on flat or shrinking wages with other costs going up.
One of the lasting experiences from the previous Tory government for many families was facing the risk of repossession, as a result of recession and soaring interest rates. Government action then was insufficient, and saw 75,000 people losing their homes in a year.
During the financial crisis Labour pulled out all the stops to keep repossession rates low (less than 40,000) through a raft of measures, including extensive and free financial and legal advice, new rules in the courts to make repossession the very last resort, pressure on the banks not to repossess and mortgage rescue schemes.
This government has cut back on even the cheapest ways to support people who find themselves in trouble by reducing the financial and legal advice available. On top of this, the level of support homeowners can claim to help with mortgage costs has been halved and Labour mortgage rescue scheme has been shrunk.
Labour is fighting hard for the right of social tenants to have security in their home (with some success). As the Tories step back from supporting struggling homeowners, we must show that we will fight for the security of those who worked to buy their own homes as well.
And as interest rates can only rise, many more in southern England will find that security sorely lacking.
The Housing Minister has challenged Alison Seabeck to say if a future Labour government would retain the affordable rent regime.
That’s a bit of a cheek. No one can retain the affordable rent regime after this programme ends in 2015. The system that Grant Shapps has created is one with a very limited shelf-life and is a destructive programme for the future of affordable housing after 2015.
The whole regime rests on Housing Associations taking on huge amounts of borrowing. Many are reporting that their capacity to borrow money will be exhausted by 2015. Some housing associations have said that they will have to borrow almost as much to finance this coming programme than they have borrowed over decades. As a result banks are eyeing housing associations warily and their ability to borrow cheaply is likely to come to an end – further reducing their ability to continue building new homes.
Any government will find a position in 2015 where our major providers of affordable homes will be lumbered with so much debt that they will struggle to borrow the money they need to carry on building, however high rents go. And frankly, they can’t go much higher.
Don’t be drawn on this question Alison – it’s one Grant Shapps must answer.
And, since this is a programme Mr Shapps created, surely he has a long-term strategy for what would happen after 2015? I look forward to hearing his answer.