Single Aspect Blog

“Not for 70 years, since the Luftwaffe, has there been such a direct threat to the well being of council tenants and their homes”

Right to buy enabled all those council tenants who could afford to, to buy their homes. The most desirable properties went first, the three bedroom houses in the suburbs.  The flats on concrete estates last, if at all.  Some of those who bought their flats on the concrete estates moved out and let their flats, often to DSS unemployed tenants with the rent paid (at that time) directly to the landlord.  This had the effect of reducing the percentage of working people on the estate.  Those working people with what these days are known as aspirations and in those days was called  ambition moved away, either via right to buy as above or simply to better things.

Just to be clear, there were estates with a bad reputation before right to buy. I worked as a council employed carpenter in London for a while in the 1970s and visited estates that were less than glamorous then, so it’s not all Maggie’s fault.

This compounding effect was bad enough then, but has been exacerbated since by the allocations policy that preceded it in the Housing Act of 1977. [Link to Guardian letters – Ed.] This is an area of some concern because the 1977 Act was itself prompted by campaigners following on from the documentary Cathy Come Home first broadcast in 1967.

The results of this may be imagined and on some estates, can be seen. This situation is fast becoming a political football with complete disregard (on the right) for the people left behind.  Having said that, not all estates are the same and there are those that work.  Estates where there are a healthy mixture of people in different situations reflecting wider society and by no means in need of regeneration, the modern word for expelling council tenants and  selling flats to overseas investors.

You might think that the answer to this problem would be obvious.  Build more council houses for (subsidised) rent thus slowly but surely allowing the allocation rules to be relaxed from people in desperate need back to the situation that existed before right to buy when anybody could apply for a council house or flat, including single men, and stand a good chance of getting one.

But no.  What the political right seek instead is the end of council housing as we know it.  They want to rid their immediate neighbourhoods of the “stigma” of council estates and their troubled tenants, and in their place invite owner occupiers.

Not for 70 years, since the Luftwaffe, has there been such a direct threat to the well being of council tenants and their homes.

Let’s give the last word to the woman who has it all at her fingertips, the woman whose grip on the subject in London is unparalleled and who was interviewed by Dave Hill for the Guardian.

Right click link and choose Save Target/Link As

Guardian Karen Buck interview mp3

Listen on YouTube -> DaveHill_KarenBuck

A worthy champion for the council tenants of the London boroughs.

Postscript from the Guardian

msenthrop

06 Jul 09, 12:04pm (about 10 hours ago)

Here goes Polly: Which party will push for councils to build housing again and put an end to the pernicious evil that was wrought by the “right to buy” policy of the Margaret Thatcher era, branding those who lived in rented housing(in particular council housing) as second class citizens, thereafter known as “social housing”; whereby it becomes necessary to either have a social problem or to cultivate one in order to be allowed to register for it?
Regards

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/06/politics-political-parties

UPDATE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/sep/21/right-to-buy-coalition-loggerheads

UPDATE: 9/5/11 Michael Collins has a different point of view.  He thinks that Labour caused the problem with the 1977 Housing Act which changed the criteria on which council housing was let, for the worse.  See his recent documentary The Rise and Fall of the Council House

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Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977

2.  Priority need  for accommodation.

(1)  For  the  purposes  of  this  Act  a  homeless  person  or  a person  threatened  with  homelessness  has  a  priority  need  for accommodation  when  the  housing  authority  are  satisfied  that he  is within  one of  the  following  categories: —
(a)  he  has  dependent  children  who  are  residing  with  him or-who  might  reasonably  be  expected  to  reside  with him;
(b)  he  is  homeless  or  threatened  with  homelessness  as  a result  of  any  emergency  such  as  flood,  fire  or  any other disaster;
(c)  he  or  any  person  who  resides  or  might  reasonably  be expected  to  reside  with  him  is  vulnerable  as  a  result of  old  age,  mental  illness  or  handicap  or  physical disability  or  other  special  reason.

(2)  For the  purposes of  this Act a homeless person or a person threatened with homelessness who  is  a pregnant woman or resides or  might  reasonably  be  expected  to  reside  with  a  pregnant woman has  a  priority need  for accommodation.

(3)  The  Secretary  of  State  may  by  order,  made  after appropriate  consultations,—
(a)  specify  further  categories  of  persons, as  having a  priority need for  accommodation, and
(b)  amend  or  repeal  any  part of subsection  (1)  or  (2)  above.

(4)  No  order  under  subsection  (3)  above  shall  be made  unless a  draft  of  the  order  has  been  approved  by  resolution  of  each House of  Parliament.

(5)  Any  reference  in  this  Act  to  a  person  having  a  priority need  is  a  reference  to his  having  a  priority need  for accommodation within the meaning of  this  section  or any order  for  the  time being  in  force  under  subsection  (3)  above.

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UPDATE: 16/6/11 Dave Hill has an interesting article today in the Guardian on the same theme, that needs based allocations are a disaster for council housing allocation:-

Newham-mayor-plans-olympic-regeneration

Charities condemn plans to let councils house locals before immigrants

US inspired plan to break up sink estates gets green light

UPDATE: Deborah Orr writing in today’s Guardian, a wonderful piece, beautifully written

The most astounding thing about this mess is that there is still a widespread failure to understand that a flagship ideological experiment in self-regulation by the market is in tatters. The deregulation of banks and building societies, combined with draconian restrictions on the provision of new council housing, which could have replaced stock diminished by the right to buy, was supposed to transform “sink estates” into privately owned and lovingly cared-for communities. Instead, the social demographic of people living in council flats has narrowed massively. The people with the greatest problems are herded together, sometimes seeking a dark kind of identity in their blighted postcode, to the point at which the threat of eviction from council housing is seriously touted as a way of encouraging people to think twice before they take part in riots. God help us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/31/tory-housing-idea-in-tatters