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From The Socialist newspaper, 3 May 2017
Housing association workers' and tenants' alternative awards ceremony
Housing workers and tenants giving 'awards' to bad landlords, 26.4.17, photo by Sarah Wrack (Click to enlarge)
Paul Kershaw , Unite the Union housing workers' branch
On 26 April, housing association (HA) managers filed in to an upmarket hotel in London for the Inside Housing awards (free food and drink for them, £1,980 per table paid for by their associations). Outside 'alternative awards' for the worst HAs were presented in front of a lively crowd of housing association residents and workers.
The newly created Housing Association Workers and Residents network had received 718 nominations for its alternative awards.
Unite housing workers branch secretary and executive member Suzanne Muna spoke: "We're here to have a bit of fun tonight, but our aim is deadly serious - we want to remind HAs what they were set up for, and to demand decent homes, decent services and decent jobs and conditions."
The 'overall lousy landlord' award went to Hyde housing. One of its residents said: "You can see the executives going in looking well-groomed in their bow ties and tuxedos. They're on salaries of over £200,000. Yet we're having to live with mouldy, damp, disgusting conditions because we can't get basic repairs done. My kids are always getting ill and miss school because they're sick.
"Instead of using our rents for posh dinners, why don't they do something to make sure their properties are maintained?"
Disgracefully, Hyde's chief executive Elaine Bailey has said HAs are guilty of creating a "dependency culture" and that residents need to take more "personal responsibility."
The Bad Awards included: most rotten repairs (Genesis), soaring service charges (Family Mosaic), rocketing rents (One Housing Group), bullying bosses (Clarion), and poverty pay (Sanctuary), among others.
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In The Socialist 3 May 2017:
What we think
Race against time for May as Corbyn sets out anti-austerity case
Socialist Party news and analysis
Jeremy Corbyn's workers' charter
Corbyn pledges a million homes and landlord regulation
McDonnell promises reversal of Tories' tax cuts for the super-rich
Corbyn pledges end to uni fees and school cuts
Corbyn government would lift NHS pay cap
Support for socialist programme in Labour Liverpool rally
Social care in crisis
Beyond the crisis point: saving social care
International socialist news and analysis
Packed court laughs down cutter Joan Burton's comparison to Marxist James Connolly
Socialist Students
NUS leadership: Blairites supported by establishment
Workplace news and analysis
Unison health conference: fury over leadership's feet dragging
Union leadership and Labour right challenged at shop workers' conference
McDonald's forced to back down on zero-hours
PCS elections - vote Democracy Alliance
Transport union protests against driver-only operation outside parliament
Socialist readers' comments and reviews
Rare opportunity to see Russian revolution lifted off the page
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition
'Socialist Steve' takes on the robots
TUSC's south Wales challenge to pro-cuts parties
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
Buy your ticket now for the political event of the year: Socialism 2017
Housing association workers' and tenants' alternative awards ceremony
Sheffield mental health campaigner: "austerity kills"
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