Nancy Taaffe, Waltham Forest Socialist Party
It is difficult to underestimate the consequences of the housing crisis we are living through; it’s so profound, it’s everywhere. Everyone has a story about the inability to find safe, secure, and affordable housing, if not for themselves then for family members.
One hidden expression of the housing crisis is chronic overcrowding. Two million children in England live in overcrowded accommodation. This can be from intergenerational living, where young families don’t have their own space, to those in temporary accommodation.
Tenants in temporary accommodation are at the sharp end of the housing crisis, often forced to live with a family in a room full of mould, with the windows virtually falling out – sometimes waiting years for a council home. Every day the news carries reports of these living tragedies. Such reports almost always end with no solution offered up.
Chronic overcrowding can also be expressed by the shrinking in space in the newbuilds that now litter our cities and towns. Living has well and truly got tiny. In my area, an ex-Labour council leader pioneered the idea of “pocket living”. This led to a raft of high rises being built with micro-studio flats with the aim of attracting ‘young professionals’ with the change to ‘get a foot on the housing ladder’.
Now, many of these blocks have increased fire risk cladding, the funky communal areas that were meant to provide ‘social spaces’ are ill-maintained, and many include extortionate and growing service charges. Those who have bought the flats can be left stuck with them. We used to joke that these flats were called ‘pocket living’ because the politicians who pioneered them were in the pockets of the developers.
Humans need space to thrive. When you look at the way cities and homes are built, you sometimes wonder why this basic idea is not applied to housing. The simple answer is profit. Property developers want to make as much money as possible from every square inch of land. The more homes, the more rooms, the more they can charge. The quality of life of those who will live in the homes they sell is of no concern to them.
The Socialist Party campaigns for council housing with lifetime secure tenancies, planned and built using the expertise of architects and town planners, and with the democratic involvement of communities and future tenants. That was the approach taken by the socialist Labour council in Liverpool in the 1980s – led by Militant, the Socialist Party’s predecessor.
Thousands of council homes, with front and back gardens, replaced tenement blocks in disrepair. The council was prepared to do what needed to be done, and mobilised a movement to stand up to the Tory government. It won millions from Thatcher.
Socialist Party says
- Build council homes with lifetime secure tenancies. Take over empty property for council housing
- End all housing privatisation and commercialisation. Take housing associations into democratic public ownership
- Introduce democratic rent controls, determined by elected bodies of tenants, housing workers and trade union representatives
- Nationalise the big property developers, land and the banks to ensure good standard council housing and cheap mortgages
