Decent Homes?

Submitted by Janine on 11 September, 2004 - 3:28

Notes from a talk by Dan Nichols to our AWL branch meeting in August

In the 1997 General Election, the Tories promised complete privatisation of the remaining Council housing stock. Instead of opposing privatisation, Labour instead promised tenants’ ballots before privatisation could go ahead.

Local government has been more than willing to push national government’s agenda.

In the 90s and 00s, there has been a big push to transfer Council housing to Housing Associations. There has been a big public subsidy for this eg. Debt write-offs to local authorities; expensive campaigns aimed at tenants.

But the transfer aganda has failed, for two main reasons:

1. Tenants vote against it because it is a bad deal for them. Rents have risen for both new and existing lets. Security of tenure is worse under Housing Associations. There is a lack of accountability, especially as tenants’ reps on Housing Association boards are trapped into ‘collective responsibility’ to block them opposing the landlord’s plans.

2. There has been a good campaign against it, co-ordinated by Defend Council Housing. This is a well-run campaign, which unites Tenants’ and Residents’ Associations (TRAs) with MPs and trade unions.

Following the failure of the transfer agenda, the government is now pushing the ‘Decent Homes Standard’. This offers tenants the ‘choice’ of:

- Private Finance Initiative (PFI), which often involves dividing an estate, demolishing part of it and selling the land;

- Arms-Length Management Organisation (ALMO), which leaves housing less ‘joined-up’ with the rest of the Council – for example, shelter has criticised ALMOs for being less efficient in housing homeless people.

- Stock transfer – continuing the old, failed policy.

Defend Council Housing is campaigning for the ‘Fourth Option’. Tenants should have the option to keep the Council as their landlord and have their homes improved to the ‘Decent Homes’ standard. There should at least be a ‘level playing field’ between this and other options.

One of only two resolutions which got minority support at the Labour Party National Policy Forum sufficient to get onto the agenda of Labour Party conference is about Council housing – calling for Councils to have the same right to borrow to fund housing as other housing providers have.

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