Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/473/2046
From The Socialist newspaper, 7 February 2007
Tenants pay when things go wrong
SOCIALIST PARTY members are actively involved in the campaign by tenants of Peabody Housing Trust to stop it selling off 1,100 homes on the open market. These homes are concentrated in areas of central London where the shortage of social housing reaches crisis proportions.
The Trust says it's short of £165 million needed to bring its homes up to the government's "decent homes standard". Certainly many Peabody tenants live in Dickensian conditions but to 'solve' the problem by selling off "assets" shows Peabody is operating like a private landlord.
Council tenants are told to accept transfer of their homes to HAs because associations can borrow the money needed to do up their homes. But it's the banks rather than the tenants that really benefit.
Peabody has lost financial control of high-profile building developments and made a mess of its borrowing. Last year, it had to spend £55 million to get out of a long-term bond deal where it was paying very high interest (10.25%). That money could have gone towards improving homes.
What happened to the bosses that made this mess? Richard McCarthy, chief executive at the time, has gone on to an even better paid job as the senior civil servant in charge of the decent homes standard! In this role he refused Peabody tenants' pleas to use government cash to save the homes for the social housing sector.
Apparently HAs now need to be subject to 'financial disciplines'. Floating housing associations on the stock market would give them greater 'financial freedoms' and much more scope for the bosses to mess up. The people who pay when things go wrong are tenants and homeless people.
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In The Socialist 7 February 2007:
Merseyside Campaign for a new workers' party
Website of the Campaign for a New Workers' Party
Civil servants' strike
Interview with Mark Serwotka: "This is just the beginning of the campaign"
Welsh strikers close down Assembly
Socialist Party NHS campaign
Anger at union leaders' timidity
Manchester nurses strike against health cuts
Environment
Change the system not the climate!
Socialist Party news and analysis
Has Manchester struck it lucky?
Socialist Party campaigns
Camden council blames cuts on 'spending gap'
Don't privatise social housing!
Tenants pay when things go wrong
Coventry - a victory for determination
Socialist Party Marxist analysis
Rising anger and discontent in Europe
International socialist news and analysis
Darfur - another failure of Western 'conflict resolution'
Sri Lanka: Keep up the protests
Socialist Party Marxist analysis
The writing on the Chinese wall
Workplace news
Stop the Valentine's Day pay massacre !
Striking back at the privateers
Corus deal threatens new cost-cutting
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