Joe Waters, Gloucestershire Socialist Party
Despite being elected on promises to address the housing crisis, among multiple other issues, Starmer’s Labour has made little progress in delivering council housing, or ‘social rent’ equivalents, since taking power last summer. Only 6% of homes approved by local councils between July and December 2024 were for social rent. Half of councils who responded to Hyphen magazine’s enquiries had not approved a single council house in the first six months of Starmer’s government.
During the general election, Labour pledged that 1.5 million homes would be built in five years, but made no commitments as to how many of those would be for social rent or council homes. For these properties, rent is set according to a formula which keeps it at about 50% of local market rate. Massively inflated market rents are either totally unaffordable, or place unviable financial burdens on workers. This is especially the case in major cities or when those workers have children to support. Recent government targets have been based around provision of ‘affordable housing’ which, at 80% of market rates, offers little improvement to the situation for struggling workers.
As a result, there are currently 1.3 million households on council housing waiting lists. Just 150,000 council houses were built across the whole of the 2010s, compared to 1.24 million built in the 1960s. To resolve the housing crisis, the need for a massive programme of council house building is clear. Working-class people desperately need a government that is willing to start construction immediately, or local councils that are willing to build council homes while building a campaign to demand the necessary resources from central government.
Under capitalism, decisions are made based on what is most profitable for the capitalists, and that includes decisions over proving a basic human need – somewhere to live. For working-class people to ensure that our housing needs are met we should nationalise the big housing and construction companies, and all other massive private operations on which millions rely, under democratic workers’ control and management. Then we can operate them according to what we need, not what keeps the rich getting richer.
