When you strip away the froth and the gimmicks, the more Boris Johnson publishes about his housing strategy for London the more it looks like a plan for the gentrification of large areas of the capital. No more social housing funded from his London pot, just ‘affordable rent’ at much higher rents. An end to the ‘50% affordable’ target in housing development.
No social rent targets set for the boroughs. No mitigation of the government’s Local Housing Allowance caps and the cap on total benefits, which even he fears might lead to ‘Kosovo-style cleansing’ of poor people from some parts of the city.
Johnson’s recently published London Plan, which will determine development over the next decade, has been well critiqued by Labour’s Nicky Gavron in the Guardian. She shows how the plan’s overall housing target is inadequate to meet London’s needs, but reserves her strongest criticisms for his policies for social housing and Johnson’s decision to remove Ken Livingstone’s planning policy that 50% of new homes should be affordable
and that, of those, 70% should be for social rent. These policies were based on detailed
assessments of housing need and the capacity of sites to deliver, and were beginning to have real effect. They were also supported by the independent Inspector responsible for
investigating Johnson’s proposals. All the inspector’s key recommendations have been ignored or over-ridden by Johnson and Eric Pickles, it appears on ideological grounds.
Why smoke and mirrors? Well, Johnson talks the talk but he walks a very different walk. He may be a card, but he is at heart a highly ideological Tory. Just like his fellow Bullingdon boy, David Cameron, the compassionate talk and the occasionally progressive idea hide the harsh market-driven policy. For example, despite saying that he didn’t want London to become like Paris “where the less well off are pushed out to the suburbs” his plan proposes building market housing in areas where there is a lot of social housing to provide a better mix but then fails to ensure that social housing will be built in areas of mainly market housing to create more mixed communities everywhere. It seems nowhere
is appropriate for social housing. He gives the go-ahead to his friends in the boroughs to remove social housing in so-called regeneration schemes, homes that will not be adequately replaced. Taken together with the government’s housing benefit policies, we now have a fully fledged policy of removing social housing, failing to build any more, and encouraging the social segregation of the city. His policies will make London like Paris but
worse.
Why smoke and mirrors? Well, just published, his latest consultation document – Initial Proposals for a Revised London Housing Strategy continues to claim credit for the delivery of social rented homes as if he really cares about having a balanced housing programme. Housing development is a very long process and the social rented homes he’s talking about are mainly the completion of those that were started under the programme for 2008-11 that was set by Ken Livingstone and the Labour government before leaving office.
Why smoke and mirrors? To understand the mayor’s real housing policy we have to look at his first unfettered decisions – the new programme for 2011-2015 – which virtually excludes funding for new social rented homes. Any new social rented homes that get built in future will either be subsidy-free (for example as a result of s.106 agreements) or will be built with local borough subsidy (eg through free land) or directly by the councils themselves. Johnson replaces homes for social rent with housing at ‘affordable rent’ levels (up to 80% of market rents). He claims in his document that this is a great achievement – providing ‘affordable’ homes with far lower levels of public subsidy. Magic. But the truth is that the rents are not affordable, the cost is transferred to the occupier or, if the occupier is eligible, onto the housing benefit bill. It is a less direct and less efficient way of providing homes. Despite the government’s protestations that it wants to make it easier to get into work, the scheme’s high rents make it harder.
Throughout, the real aim, to ‘marketise’ housing and remove social housing as a concept, is hidden from public view.
And the man with a shock of white hair, a top hat, a few jokes and a droopy magic wand, releases the blue smoke, flashes the bright lights and deploys the mirrors. The trick is complete.
Cue applause. Or catcalls – because he’s been rumbled.
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A tale of two rioters
Picture the scene. Two 15 year olds caught up in the riots. Both enter a building and steal something, no violence involved but it’s clearly burglary. Both are caught by CCTV, arrested, charged, and brought before the Courts. Both are sentenced to 6 months in jail. The justice system has worked.
But there is one difference between the two children. One lives with his parents in a small terraced house that they bought 25 years ago and have brought their three children up in. No-one in the family has been in trouble before. The other lives with his parents in a small terraced house that they got from the council 25 years ago and have brought their three children up in. No-one in the family has been in trouble before.
What does justice have to say about this? Both have been dealt with, punished seriously for their crime. Both will have the blight of a criminal conviction and prison sentence hanging over them for years to come. But it’s fair treatment.
The first boy, when released, will return to his family in their family home and try to take up his life. There is some security and stability as he rebuilds. It’s hard but possible.
The second boy, when released, finds that his family has been evicted by the council from the family home because of his crime. They were declared intentionally homeless, so they won’t be rehoused. They have taken two private rented rooms in a shared house at a cost of nearly twice the council rent they were paying. Dad thinks he can’t afford to keep working. The youngest child is bedwetting, a result of the trauma of eviction say the medics. Mum is suffering from depression and is struggling to keep her job. They are not able to take the oldest boy in. He drifts off to stay on someone’s sofa. There is no security and stability from which to build. It’s very hard and it feels almost impossible.
What does justice have to say about this? None of this is fanciful; anyone involved in housing knows that this story reflects the reality.
There is no doubt that the mood is about retribution. Polls show that more people want tenants evicted than don’t. But neighbours who are home owners or private tenants probably don’t want anyone convicted of a serious crime living next to them either. And the determination of some councils to evict, and the government’s determination to make it easier for them, will not apply more generally to your common or garden murderer or rapist or burglar.
It may allow politicians to sound tough. It may be what people want. But it isn’t justice. It’s double punishment, it’s guilt by association, it’s discrimination on the grounds of tenure, pure and simple.
Labour, nationally and locally, should have nothing to do with it.
This post by Steve Hilditch follows previous posts on the riots and the aftermath by Steve and Tony Clements here here here here and here. We are keen to see these issues debated as widely as possible. This post has also appeared at LabourList where there are also a number of comments and a bit of debate.
I do a bit of moonlighting on the blogging page of the MJ, with more of a local government focus. Here’s my latest post for them:
Is it a council’s job to promote homeownership?
A report by the National Housing Federation yesterday argued that the rate of homeownership is likely to fall to the levels last seen in the mid-eighties.
The lack of homes, high prices and difficulty of getting a mortgage (even if you’re on a good salary) is not exactly fresh news to many thousands of first-time buyers. Homeownership has already been falling for a number of years now after its peak in 2003 of 70%.
Should councils care about this? At first glance, no. They have statutory duties to the homeless and those in housing need and have a planning system to administer. They have more than enough on their plates providing sufficient affordable homes, finding temporary accommodation for those who need it and trying to keep tabs on the less scrupulous private landlords in their area.
But in the past councils have underpinned Britain’s high levels of homeownership. Right-to-buy (for better or worse) vastly increased the number of those who owned their own home and spread ownership far further down the income scale. Councils used to provide mortgages to their residents – the hurdle which is tripping up most of today’s first-time buyers. Many also used their council housing to help people buy. They sound dated now, but ‘young married couples schemes’ gave time-limited tenancies and social rents to young couples to help them save for a deposit.
The rising homeownership of the past was enabled by high and sustained levels of house building. It’s no accident that the highest levels of private house building went side-by-side with the highest levels of council house building. Prior to the recession, we got used to the idea that affordable housing was a ‘by-product’ of successful and high value private development, through Section 106 agreements and the like. Through the sixties and seventies large council house building programmes supported large-scale development by private enterprise – providing the industry with a certain stream of work and increasing capacity in the building industry.
If it becomes a goal of public policy again to increase the levels of homeownership in society, the government will need to remember that it was local councils that had a key role in making 70% levels possible.
Tony also blogs at Red Brick.
The National Housing Federation’s statement, based on Oxford Economics’ Research, that home ownership will continue to decline, from 73 per cent of households at its peak to a likely 64 per cent in the next decade, brought Grant Shapps into the spotlight on the Today programme this morning.
Interviewer Evan Davies knows a little economics and that relief for the millions locked out of home ownership will only come from much greater housebuilding (interview available on iplayer). So he badgered our friend to say if housebuilding would increase as a result of the government’s various policies. Now you might imagine that the answer would be ‘yes’. But instead there was prevarication and several attempts to explain the intricacies of the New Homes Bonus, bottom up rather than top down, and the rest. It was a minor relief that he didn’t explain his houseboat strategy.
Davies, apparently unimpressed, pressed the simple point about whether building will rise. Yes or no? Our hero blustered… difficult to predict… try to make them go up… disappointed if not… pulling out all of the stops… Still the word ‘yes’ did not escape from his lips.
What can we read into this equivocation? Well, a cynic would say he knows that
housebuilding is not going to increase under his policies and may well fall into further decline. And even a friendly interpretation could go no further than to suggest the probable real truth. He has no idea. One giant experiment – scrapping the regional
framework of strategies and targets in favour of localism plus a little financial incentive – is leading to chaos and uncertainty and power being put in the hands of those opposed to housebuilding. No-one knows what the outcome will be, but we can all guess.
Amongst other indicators, the Oxford Economics report shows that the number of projects receiving planning approval – an important measure of the ‘pipeline’ for new build – has not recovered from the collapse caused by the recession. According to OE, the policy changes “are already having an impact on the planning decisions made by a number of local authorities – e.g. Bristol and the surrounding authorities, Milton Keynes and Leeds have cut their future housing allocations by a total of 88,000 according to the Home Building Federation. As such, we see only a gradual recovery in house building – it will take until 2020 or beyond for new starts to reach pre-crisis levels.”
The NHF is calling for more government investment in affordable housing to stimulate a wider, faster economic recovery, for suitable surplus public land to be made available for the building of affordable homes, for local authorities to regularly assess housing need and for ministers to make a renewed commitment to building the homes the country needs.
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Simply messing about in boats
There has been a ground breaking housing policy development that Red Brick readers may just have missed. It’s the government’s Houseboat Strategy.
In genuinely out of the box, beyond the blue-sky thinking, the government plans to help more people live on boats.
In a new bout of press release-based policy making Grant Shapps has said that:
“new moorings could be eligible for the New Homes Bonus, which sees the government match council tax from new-build homes.”
Erm, so maybe not quite helping people live on boats, but saying that the government is considering something that’s just about interesting enough to be covered in the news.
British Waterways cut to the real heart of the issue and were “pleased to note the reassurance from Mr Shapps’ department that people can qualify for housing benefit for help with mooring fees.”
You’ve got to give it to Mr Shapps as a tactical politician: no band-wagon goes by unleapt on and every eye-catching line gets a policy thrown together behind it.
But surely someone in DCLG, No10, Cabinet Office, CCHQ must be concerned that at some stage the total lack of interest in any type of strategy, plan or vision may cause them a problem?
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Myths about migrants
On Red Brick we’ve taken an interest in trying to test out and bust a few of the myths in housing.
One area where there are more myths than most is in migration policy and the access that ‘foreigners’ have to social housing. It’s interesting that social housing is often portrayed in the media as being the lowest of the low, except when it is occupied by immigrants, in which case it is a wonderful national asset that should only go to ‘British people’.
Migration Watch gets a lot of sympathetic coverage in some parts of the media and their latest use and abuse of statistics comes in their ‘study’ on social housing and migration in England, in which they claim that the social housing requirements of new immigrants will
cost the taxpayer £1 billion a year for the next 25 years. They say that “45 additional social homes would have to be built everyday, or nearly 1400 a month, over that period to meet the extra demand” and “The impact of immigration on the availability of social housing for British people has been airbrushed out for too long. Either the government must cut
immigration very substantially as they have promised or they must invest very large sums in the construction of extra social housing”.
At least I can agree with the last 13 words of that quote.
John Perry, who blogs at the Migrant Rights Network, has analysed Migration Watch’s claims and the Migration Observatory has published a detailed briefing on the real facts about migrants and housing.
Perry demonstrates that there is no automatic link between the number of new households that are projected to be formed by migrants and the provision of social housing. On current government spending plans migrants would have to take virtually all of the funding available and new homes provided for the claim to be true.
Yet few if any new migrants will actually get these homes. The percentage of new social lettings going to foreign nationals is 7%, most of whom have lived here for many years in
order to qualify. The Migration Observatory points out that 75% of new immigrants go into the private rented sector, and that is probably where the serious issues around migration and housing lie.
The veracity of Migration Watch’s analysis can be summed up by the graph they include which shows the ‘cumulative stock of migrants’ and ‘households on waiting lists’ on the same chart, as if they were correlated in some way. You might as well correlate Newcastle United’s league position and the frequency of cyclones in south east Asia.
With his Chartered Institute of Housing hat on, John Perry has also written a helpful guide on the role of housing providers in relation to UK migration and how to handle national policies and trends, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The paper comments that “Migration policy often focuses on the number of new migrants entering the UK, but little is done to support neighbourhoods where migrants already live. Central government is withdrawing from these issues at a local level, placing more
importance than ever before on regional and local leadership”.
It then highlights the ways in which housing providers have already taken steps towards better neighbourhood cohesion and integration and suggests ways in which they could do more because they are well placed to do so. It also explores the perceived and actual
competition between migrants and host communities for housing.
Migration is a complex and emotive topic where exaggeration is rife and ‘facts’ are often exploited by the media to promote a particular political agenda. The housing world generally and many individual providers have a terrific record in promoting community coherence, work that is needed more than ever after the events of the last few weeks. There is an appetite in the sector to do even more and the CIH/JRF guide and the MO briefing are invaluable and highly recommended tools.
The latest fault line in the Coalition seems to be developing around taxation.
Chancellor George Osborne is ‘reviewing’ the top 50% income tax rate, much to the annoyance of the LibDems, whose priority in income tax terms is to raise thresholds to take the lowest paid out of tax altogether. The LibDems have the Coalition Agreement on
their side and Danny Alexander is on the record as saying: “The idea that we are going to shift our focus to the wealthiest in the country at a time when everyone is under pressure is just in cloud cuckoo land.” But Osborne faces a lot of pressure from the Tory right, including Boris Johnson, who has called loudly for the 50% tax rate to go.
The LibDems’ Vince Cable has admitted that the top rate of tax should be removed, because the Coalition are united against high marginal rates of tax, but that it should be
replaced by a tax on wealth or on highly valued property, not a position that will endear him to the Tory right. Cable was a strong advocate for the LibDems manifesto promise (which didn’t make it into the Coalition Agreement) to introduce a Mansion Tax.
Last weekend Eric Pickles joined the debate (or bitter in-fighting, whichever you prefer),
arguing that the 50% tax band was only a temporary measure to reduce the deficit and lambasting the Mansion Tax idea: “It would be a very big mistake to start imposing
taxation on the back of changes in property values, particularly with big regional variations”….”People will suddenly find themselves in a mansion and they hadn’t realised it was a mansion. If it is only going to be mansions, the kind of thing you and I would regard as a mansion, it ain’t going to raise very much.” But he also makes clear he is against any increase in taxes on ‘the middle class’. As he is also against taxes for the rich, that doesn’t leave many options other than more cuts.
The LibDems’ original proposal for a 0.5% annual Mansion Tax on properties valued at £1 million or more was quickly revised when they realised how many people in LibDem target seats in London and the south east already owned homes that were over the threshold. Their revised proposal – a 1% annual tax on homes over £2 million – hit far fewer people and attracted more support – including from David Miliband during the Labour leadership election. The tax was estimated to raise £1.7 bn a year and Miliband claimed it would avoid the need to make savings in the housing benefit budget.
Taxing wealth, property and land has been a shibboleth for many in the Labour Party over
the years. The Labour Land Campaign has argued long and hard for the introduction of a Land Value Tax saying, in principle, that land is a finite resource, that increases in value are created by the society as a whole not the individual landowner, and that the community as a whole should benefit.
An excellent pamphlet by Toby Lloyd published by Compass in 2009 called ‘Don’t bet the house on it’ looked at the ways major reform of property taxation could help tackle our dysfunctional housing market and the crisis in housing supply. He detailed the advantages of introducing a LVT, making possible a total reform of the complex array of property-related taxation in this country.
Whether Labour’s housing policy review will venture into this territory will have to be seen. It would not be good if the LibDems managed to push the Coalition into adopting a Mansion Tax or any other additional property tax as part of a deal over removing the 50% tax band but Labour had not even got round to considering the matter. The argument about Mansion Tax could raise some fundamental issues about the housing and land markets that all parties have dodged for many years. Even if the Tories don’t like it, there may even prove to be a progressive majority in favour of a big reform.
Categories
Inconsistent opinions
I’ve suffered from conflicting responses to the riots. After seeing rioting round the corner from me and the TV pictures from across London, I find myself with some sympathy with the toughest penalties. Then I find myself in disbelief at the harshness of a 4 year sentences for a Facebook message about criminal disorder which didn’t even take place. (As a regular twitterer, blogger and Facebooker, I hope the precedent of tough measures against those who say stupid things online does not spread.)
Tony Blair wrote in the Observer yesterday:
“some of the disorder was caused by rioters and looters who were otherwise ordinary young people who got caught in a life-changing mistake from which they will have to rebuild.”
It’s hard to see how custodial sentences for such mistakes will make rebuilding possible.
But enough of my flaky opinions. There’s some real research out now about what people think about the riots broken down by ‘social grade’. It shows that people at the lower end of the scale back tougher penalties that those who are better off.
36% of ‘C2DEs’ think the sentences being carried out are ‘too soft’ and 9% too harsh, the rest ‘about right’.
That’s pretty striking.
It means those most likely to be living in social housing (they are most likely to be C2DE) are among those who want to see custodial sentences for riot-related Facebook messages. Passing the now peaceful Pembury Estate yesterday, it can hardly be surprising that those who suffered most from the looting, violence and criminality want to see the perpetrators put away – and have less sympathy for explanations relating to poverty and disadvantage.
In ‘defending social tenants’ and those in poorer neighbourhoods by arguing against evictions, cuts to benefits, draconian sentences, we need to remember that a large number of the same people will want to be ‘defended’ by the implementation of such measures.
Doesn’t mean they’re necessarily right, but we can’t just discount the views of those in the bottom half of society. The liberal argument needs to be one that appeals to the whole social spectrum. Its advocates need to recognise they begin on the wrong side of the argument for millions of people whose interests they would otherwise champion.
The more I hear from MPs who fiddled their expenses but were allowed just to write a cheque to pay them back, now denouncing people who stole chewing gum or bottled water or were given a pair of shorts during the riots, the more I think they have lost control of their ethics.
An excellent piece in the Guardian today by Vera Baird (Riots sentencing: a sinister attempt to upend the judicial process) describes how firmly the government’s hand is on the tiller of the rash of extreme punishments, aiming to deliver Cameron’s edict that everyone involved in the riots should expect to go to jail, no matter how trivial their offence. Using historical precedents – for example, during the miners’ strike it was very difficult to get fair acquittals for strikers at the magistrates’ court – she shows how easy it is to lose all judgement: anger is not a good servant of justice.
The government-inspired hysteria around sentencing is reverberating around many councils as well. There was a rush of council leaders trying to look tougher than the rest, although they were all beaten to it by Wandsworth, a council which has never held tenants in high regard (or indeed wanted them in the borough at all), who claimed that a tenant whose son had been caught up in the riot “will today (Friday) be served with an eviction notice”. Nearly Legal website notes that Wandsworth’s new leader Ravi Govindia’s rush to make a name for himself was not all that it seemed. First, the tenant’s son has not been convicted of anything, and secondly, the alleged incident was not in the location of the tenant’s flat, so that any attempted repossession on the grounds of nuisance would struggle.
And then the Notice seems to have not been a Notice of Seeking Possession, let alone an ‘eviction notice’ but a warning letter. The tenant concerned even got quite a good hearing from the normally prejudicial Daily Mail. NL wryly commented: “If even the Daily Mail is having second thoughts, Ravi Govindia clearly runs the risk of looking, well, pretty damn stupid in such a desperate act of witless publicity seeking.”
Mary Riddell, writing in the equally unlikely Telegraph, commented: “Threatening to evict a charity worker and her eight-year-old daughter is an act of political spite. Had this mother, whose “crime” is that her 18 year-old son is charged with violent disorder, given birth to a mass murderer, she would not be treated in such a fashion.”
Wandsworth are now looking like fools and so are the Labour councils now caught in the slipstream. They should reconsider their precipitate action and come to their senses.
There are 2 big events for LHG in September.
London Labour Housing Group
LLHG will hold its first AGM on Monday 12 September at the House of Commons. The guest speaker will be Jon Cruddas MP who will lead a discussion on London housing policy for the mayoral election and the Labour Party’s national housing policy review.
The meeting is open to members of LHG living in London. Labour Party members can sign up to join LHG at any time, including on the night. For membership information, go to: http://www.labourhousing.co.uk/join-lhg
We need to know numbers in advance so if you are interested in coming, please email Steve Hilditch at steve@hilditchonline.com
LHG at Labour Party Conference.
For those attending Labour Conference in Liverpool, below is the information for LHG’s fringe meeting.
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Labour Party Conference 2011 Fringe Meeting Labour Housing Group with SERA and the Co-op Party Homes For The Future – reviewing possibilities Sunday 25th September 2011 –– 6.00pm – 8.00pm Riverside Balcony, ACC BT Convention Centre Chair Jacky Peacock OBE, Vice Chair LHG Speakers: Leonie Cooper, SERA Huw Lewis, Welsh Admission is FREE and REFRESHMENTS are provided
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