Labour Policy Review Archives

We don’t often delve into the world of poetry on Red Brick – a bit of Burns prompted by a literate Scottish friend is all I can recall. But I was struck by references to a poem by the C20th Greek poet CP Cavafy in a recent speech by Julia Unwin, head of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ was written in 1904, the same year that Joseph Rowntree wrote his founding document for the three Rowntree Trusts. Julia interprets the poem like this:
“Cavafy describes a town threatened by barbarians, where fear of what is to happen closes down the small town. The orators stop declaiming, the poets stop writing, people hide away and the marketplace empties. The barbarians are coming and there is no point in any creativity, any beauty, and any values. No point in enterprise. No point in education. But the poem concludes, once the word has come that there are no barbarians: and now what shall become of us without any barbarians? These people were some kind of a solution.
“It seems to me that the biggest risk we face is to see the outside world as so frightening that we allow it to paralyse us, and therefore step back from our historic role of speaking truth to power, and making sure that the social contract for the 21st century is one that allows us to describe clearly the social good that JRF and JRHT were established to promote.”
Joseph Rowntree himself, in his founding memorandum, stressed the need to look beyond ‘superficial manifestations of weakness or evil’ and to direct more thought and effort into searching out ‘their underlying causes’.
There are lessons to be taken from this as Labour cranks up its policy-making machine. Especially in housing – Rowntree himself took a big interest in the land question, an issue that has never gone away – Labour could suffer from a poverty of ambition due to the sheer scale of the housing problems that will have to be addressed. As Labour surveys the huge and seemingly irreversible changes being brought in by the Tories, it risks policy paralysis because of the dominance of the deficit in political debate (housing will never be tackled without huge expenditure of capital, which implies borrowing).
Unfortunately this time the barbarians have made it into town, but there is strong resistance. And they won’t be in charge forever – today they will lose many more council seats, next May they will lose London. The challenge for all of us in housing is to grab Ed Miliband’s blank sheet of paper, apply our collective creativity and values (less sure about beauty) and write a whole new housing chapter that really does go beyond the superficial manifestations to tackle the underlying causes.

The links between bad housing and ill-health always seem obvious to anyone who has worked in the housing sector. Although controlling the spread of disease was a major factor in the surge of interest in the housing conditions of the working classes a century ago, even the advent of ‘joined-up policy making’ in modern times has failed to establish the case that spending on improving housing could be an important factor in preventing ill-health and reducing the requirement to spend on health care.
If your job involves being in and out of other people’s homes you tend to see the effects of bad housing daily but it still seems to be a poorly evidenced area of policy. It’s good then that there has been more interest in this topic recently.
A recent report by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology pulls together a lot of evidence from multiple sources and shows in particular the importance of the Decent Homes programme. Conditions linked to non-decent housing include: cardiovascular diseases; respiratory diseases; rheumatoid arthritis; depression and anxiety; nausea and diarrhoea; infections; allergic symptoms; hypothermia; physical injury from accidents; food poisoning. The report also points out that “Proposals to stop providing social tenancies for life may also decrease security of tenure which could lead to an increase in mental health problems”. Overall, the report says, the detrimental effect of poor housing costs the Health Service over £600m a year.
Yesterday, Shelter Cymru published research conducted by themselves and the Building Research Establishment (BRE) which estimated that poor housing costs the NHS in Wales around £67m a year. It calculates the costs to the NHS of treating accidents and illnesses caused by problems in the home such as unsafe steps, electrical hazards, excessive cold, damp and mould. If you include other disbenefits of poor housing, such as children’s poor educational attainment and reduced life chances, the wider bill to society is estimated to be even greater at around £168m a year. Shelter say this is the first time a definitive financial cost has been placed on poor housing, emphasising that the economic case for improving bad housing in Wales is as strong as the moral case. They also point to the progress made in housing under Aneurin Bevan, when housing policy was firmly located in the health department.
The report estimates that the payback time in health care savings of bringing all housing up to acceptable condition would be 22 years, but that in some areas it would be much less, for example investment in addressing dangerous stairs would be paid back in 5.7 years.
Taking the argument one step further, the resident-controlled housing association WECH has done ground-breaking research showing the beneficial effect that empowerment can have on well-being, thereby reducing ill-health. Their research shows that, although WECH residents experience high levels of deprivation, they are happier and more engaged because they collectively own their estates and feel a much stronger sense of belonging to their neighbourhood.
As Labour embarks on its housing policy review, it will be important to avoid a silo approach to housing policy. The external benefits of housing investment deserve to be at the top of the agenda.