Labour’s housing policy won’t solve crisis

From a Socialist Party press release, 27.4.15

This week the housing crisis finally reached Westminster. Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidates made rent control a major plank of the TUSC campaign in 2010 and activists in the coalition have been calling for rent control and investment in building and refurbishing quality council homes for years.

TUSC is the sixth biggest party standing in the general election and is 100% anti-austerity. TUSC has been arguing that cuts are not necessary because there is plenty of money and yesterday’s Sunday Times Rich List backs up this point.

Nancy Taaffe, TUSC candidate in Walthamstow and housing campaigner, said:

“Labour’s eleventh-hour attempts to appeal to private tenants involves proposed capping of the rate of rent increases within a three-year period. Who wouldn’t welcome even this small concession? But Labour is merely papering over the cracks while the walls fall down! It falls far short of what’s needed to solve the desperate and snowballing housing crisis.

TUSC calls for rent control that controls the level of rent. The Labour proposal simply covers the rate at which rents increase.”

For most of the 20th century there was rent control in the UK. Until the Thatcher government abolished rent control in 1988 you could take your landlord to a ‘rent tribunal’ and have your rent reduced. Tenancies created before 1988 still have this right. Rent tribunals still operate for them and the legislation is still effective so it would be relatively easy for a new government to extend the reach of tribunals as an emergency measure.

There is much talk about the need for cuts to balance the books; but almost 40% of the annual £25bn housing benefit bill goes to private landlords. Currently the private rented sector is heavily subsidised to provide insecure accommodation at unaffordable prices.

It is true that rent control will not ‘solve’ the housing crisis, for that we need to build more homes. Labour’s ‘target’ is to build 200,000 in the last year of a new government. But it is estimated we need 250,000 homes per year just to keep pace with new households – let alone deal with the backlog. So even if their target was achieved the shortage would still be getting worse.

But they don’t propose to reverse the cuts to the social housing grant or local authority budgets. Without doing that even their pathetically inadequate target is likely to prove a pipe dream. To really address the crisis we need to break with austerity.

TUSC wants to see investment in a mass programme of council housing building and refurbishment. There is money out there – the Rich List proves that. There is no shortage of cash it’s just the question of who controls it. When the banks crashed the economy, the Bank of England found £375bn to bail them out. Let’s bail out all those who need decent homes, and unemployed construction workers too.