Hackney Cabinet Attacks Estates
Hackney Council's Cabinet has agreed to the deputy mayor's proposals for 'estate regeneration' - selling spaces on estates to be built on. The policy that was agreed by the Labour Group was bad enough, but the version that went to Cabinet looks even worse.
In the original document, six estates were identified as requiring "selective demolition to release infill opportunities". The Cabinet document now reveals that five of those will in fact be completely demolished, with the land sold to an RSL for its own developments. The sixth will be treated entirely separately as part of the Hackney Central Area Action Plan, and will not know what the Council plans for it until next year. But we get a heavy hint with the Cabinet's statement that the area "has the potential for significant housing gain." Guess which estate we're talking about? Yep, the one I live on.
Hackney's Cabinet seems pleased with itself that it has discovered a way to 'get round' the limited amount of democratic rights that tenants have to prevent their homes being privatised. If the Council proposes to transfer your home to a Registered Social Landlord (RSL) via 'stock transfer', then it has to ballot you and your fellow tenants, and if you vote 'No', they can not go ahead. However, if it proposes to demolish your home, 'decant' you elsewhere, and sell the land to an RSL to build on, then you have no such right to a vote! Without a democratic vote, tenants and residents have no choice but to actively fight this attack on our estates.
A further 22 estates are scheduled for 'infill' - patches of land sold to RSLs to build on. These estates will then have more than one landlord - the Council plus at least one RSL. The Nightingale estate already has this kind of set-up, and a Nightingale residents' representative recently told us what a nightmare it is, with the various landlords forever bickering with each other as to whose responsibility it is to clean the playground, fund the old folks' club etc.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Council will be funding the improvement works to its office accommodation by selling a two-acre site in Shoreditch to developers. I have no objection to offices being improved, if that is needed. But the Council is saying that it has to sell bits of estates to provide housing as though there is nowhere else it could build. How about building on this site in Shoreditch rather than selling it off?!
The estate regeneration policy is dressed up as a way of releasing money to achieve Decent Homes. The government brought in the Decent Homes policy, so it should ensure that local Councils can implement it without having to "sell the family silver" (as we used to call it when privatisation was a Tory policy and the whole of the Labour Party was against it). It seems that Hackney Council embarked on its Decent Homes work whilst keeping secret that it did not have the resources to see it through. It is only now that Decent Homes is underway - and that Hackney's Councillors are safely re-elected - that they admit their shortfall and unleash this attack on where we live.
At a conference of tenants' and residents' representatives on 21st October, Cabinet member Alan Laing told us that this redevelopment work would not go ahead on any estate where residents opposed it. I suspect that he felt obliged to say this under pressure of the delegates' anger at the Council's policy. But I also suspect that this promise will turn out in reality to mean "If you don't accept the privatisation and 'infill', then you won't get your Decent Homes work done".
Councillor Laing also told us that he supports the 'fourth option' ie. that Councils should have the right and resources to improve their own housing stock without having to privatise it. However, it seems that whilst the Labour government is happy to ignore three successive votes of Labour Party conference in favour of the fourth option, Councillor Laing and his colleagues are also happy to implement the government's gun-to-the-head policy of only allowing improvements if they come with privatisation.
Late addition: There is another difference between the document that went to Labour Group and the one that went to Cabinet - the former said that 550+ homes would be built in the 'infill' areas on estates, the latter says 700+. I suspect that even the sardines might move out.
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There is Another Option
The Government gave another option that Council's rarely if ever mention. Housing Estates can be transfered to the ownership of a Tenants Co-operative. Some information was put together by UNISON and other unions several years ago on this option. Funding for such co-operatives is available from a number of sources. And to give some idea of how little funding is required, when Newcastle sold its housing stock to an ALMO in 2000 each house was sold for just £6,000. As long as worker's houses are under the control of some landlord whether or not that landlord is a local Council, they will lack real control over an important aspect of their lives, they will face continual uncertainty, lack of control over the condiiton and quality of the communities in which they live, of the state of their housing and its repair over what they can and can't do with those houses, over the playgrounds and other amenities in those communities, over the rents and other housing costs they face now and in the future.
The existence of Tenants Associations is a good start for being able to establish such co-operatives. Taking back ownership and control of such an important aspect of people's lives and placing it directly in the ownership and control of the working class would be an important step towards socialism, and of educating the working class on how it can and should take back under its own ownership and control other important aspects of its life.
Arthur Bough
TMOs?
Arthur, do you mean TMOs (Tenant Management Organisations)? These do seem like an attractive idea, but looking at how the handful of them have functioned in Hackney, it looks like a trap to me.
They are set adrift by the Council, and left to balance their own under-funded books. So the TMO ends up unable to carry out all the repairs, unable to hold the Council to account (in one example, when it failed to safely remove drugs paraphernalia), and could even (hypothetically) find itself attacking the wages and conditions of the estate cleaner to stay within its budget.
It seems to me like an attempt to co-opt tenants into cutting their own throats.
No I Mean Housing Co-operatives
No I mean that instead of the houses being transferred to some SRL, or to an ALMO the tenants establish a housing co-operative, and the housing stock is transferred into its ownership, and control. Of course, it depends upon obtaining sufficeint capital investment to enable the houses to be bought, and tenants may find that they are not in as good a position to achieve this as an ALMO, but that requires a political campaign to ensure that funding is made available in sufficient quantity and at appropriate rates.
It does also depend upon the price per house the Council wants to charge as part of the transfer. As I said in newcastle that was £6,000 per house a fraction of what a tenant would have paid themselves. The argument for that was that the ALMO has to cover all future repairs, and cover the cost of administration. The same argument applies as to why a similar discounted price should be charged to a Housing Co-operative. The advantage for the Co-operative is that it is not likely to pay the over inflated salaries of the top Directors that ALMO's pay, and because it is under the direct control of tenants is able to function more efficiently from the beginning.
Its true that theoretically such a co-operative might turn out not to be as efficent as private providers of such a service, and so might need to charge higher rents or reduce wages or provision, but as a socialist I prefer to continue to believe in the innate superiority of co-operative over capitalist provision. Its true that theoretically the Council might be able to provide a more efficient service though given the innate bureuacratism of local state capitalist provision, and the high salaries paid to top Council officials that seems unlikely. But even were that the case here is little evidence to suggest that such greater efficiency would result in better provision or lower rents for Council tenants.
Its true that an inefficient state capitalist provision of housing through the Council could nevertheless provide good quality housing and low rents for tenants, with the Council's inefficieny being made up through higher Council Tax, but there is little evidence to suggest that the theoretical possibility is likely in practice. On the contrary, the main reason that the issue of housing transfers has arisen is because of the decades of neglect of Public Housing stock by Local Authorities. Its theoretically possible that Tenants could through their direct action bring about such improved provision,and lower rents and I would certainly support any direct action to that end just as I would support workers in fighting for higher wages. But even were such direct action to result in a victory, the likely Council response would be higher Council Tax, and it would only be a matter of time before the Council sought the opportunity to increase rents, and reduce provision once again, or worse to sell the houses off. That is the consequence of state capitalist rather than socialist provision.
Yes, its possible that workers might make a mess of running things for themselves, might find they can't run things more efficiently than the capitalists. If that turns out to be true then socialism is doomed. I prefer to remain optimistic.
Arthur Bough
Some Links
I was trying to find the old UNISON documents on Housing C-ops as the 4th option to ALMO's etc., but couldn't locate it. However, there are several links here.
Some Links on Housing Co-ops
Report to Birmingham City Council. This report also contains a link to a PriceWaterhouse report which demonstrated that Housing Co-ops are effective.
Report to Birmingham Council
Confederation of Co-operative Housing website.
Arthur Bough
But Arthur ...
I can't see the massive difference between what you are describing and TMOs. It still looks like trap to me.
Two basic problems:
- One, a Tenants' Co-operative does not have the power to tax the rich to fund housing maintenance and improvement on the scale necessary. It would be great if we could develop the political power to achieve this, but if we did, we would be strong enough to enforce democratic residents' management of estates whilst keeping them in public ownership.
- Two, public housing should be public housing - belonging to everyone, not simply to the people who live there at present, but providing housing for future generations too.
This is not about whether tenants would be 'efficient' or not. I agree that tenants/residents would make a much better job of running an estate than most Councils, which is why TMOs look like an attractive option to start with. Rather, it is about avoiding the trap of administering our own traps, and allowing public stock to be transferred out of public ownership using an apparent increase in tenant's control as a pretext.
Finally, there is a big battle going on to prevent Council housing becoming completely extinct. As part of that fight, we must promote increase democratic control by tenants and residents over estates. But we must not allow ourselves to be distracted from the key fight to defend Council housing by going off at a tangent.
Practice and Reality
1. "A Tenant's Co-operative does not have the power to tax the rich to fund housing maintenance and improvement on the scale necessary."
Have Council's done that? No. The last 30 years have seen increasing dereliction of Council estates, and diminishing investment in reparis and maintenance. Far from Council's - Labour and Tory alike - taxing the rich to pay for the poor in Council houses, Housing Rveneue accounts have been used over that period to subsidise the General rate Fund i.e. Council Tenants subsidised the richer Rate and Council Tax Payers.
Could Council's have taxed the rich to pay for Council House repairs. In theory yes. What would have been required. Firstly, that Tory and Labour Governments didn't cap Council's that set high Council Tax levels. Pretty unlikely under the Tories, and not less likely under a Blairite Government. Secondly, that a Council is elected committed to such a course of action. What is required for that? Firstly, that you have a workers party class conscious enough, militant enough and with sufficient support within the community to pursue such a course of action. Do we have that? No. If we did who would these class conscious workers be? The same ones you describe as being necessary for Tenants themselves to enforce taxing of the rich to pay for the maintenance.
2. "Public Housing should be Public Housing - belonging to everyone, not simply to the people who live there at present, but providing housing for future generations too."
But Council housing has never been, and under capitalism almost likely never would be housing belonging to everyone, anymore than the Coal Board, British Steel, British Rail, the NHS or any other state capitalist enterprise belonged to everyone. They belonged to the Capitalist state, and were run for by the bureuacrats of that state for the benefit of capitalism, not for the benefit of the working class or even the Public. That is why when Council houses were sold to their tenants, or to SLR's the public were never asked if they wanted to sell their property.
There has been no Council housing built for 20 years so to talk about it as providing housing for future generations seems completely removed from reality.
But even were that not the case it does not differ from the same housing being built and run by a co-operative. In fact had existing estates been run by co-operatives over the last 30 years, not only would they have been able to ensure that their rents went to the vital maintenance of their estates rather than subsidising the General rate Fund or setting up their estates to be taken over by SLRL's, they would almost certainly have been able to build up the necessary resources to have built MORE housing, in order to really - as opposed to the theoretical possibility - build more housing for future generations. They would have been in a better position to have dealt with problems of anti-social behaviour on their estates rather than seeing resources drained away into dealing with its consequences. They would have been in a position to have provided work for craftsmen from within their communities in co-operative enterprises building and maintaining that housing on better conditions, and less alienated in its relations with the community than the workers employed and exploited by the local state, whose jobs have become more and more tenuous over the last 30 years, and in many cases have disappeared altogether as the local state has privatised that work.
Tenants do not remain in their properties for ever more, and their property does not belong to them individually, but to the co-operative. It is no less Public Housing, in fact it is more so, than Council Housing. Therefore, I do not see such transfer to real public control as a trap at all. There are problems, as there are with all co-operatives udner capitalism. But in fact, in this respect there are fewer problems than with a workers co-operative trying to survive in a competitive market place. The uncertainty of the market plays very little part in the activity of a housing co-operative. A Housing Co-operative like an ALMO needs to have a large amount of Capital in order to buy the stock, and to finance the the repair and maintenance work ahead of that being funded by the revenue stream of rents over a lengthy timescale. The experience of co-operatives is that lenders try to charge higher rates of interest. But a Co-operative should have the same access to the Housing Corporation funds, and on the same terms as an ALMO. In addition, the Co-op Bank, Unity Trust etc. are supposed to be workers organisations, a political campaign is required to ensure that such organisations use their funds to support such ventures.
I agree that we should promote increased demcoratic control over estates by tenants and residents. We should support every direct action waged by such groups including support for campaigns against stock transfers to ALMO's and other SRL's. But the Marxist takes the opportunity during a strike, whilst giving it their utmost support to draw out the lesson for workers that such strikes are mere skirmishes in the class war, that such skirmishes will continue, and that the odds are stacked against the workers in such skirmishes as long as the workers have to sell their labour power to capitalists, that such a situation will only end when the workers themselves own the means of production. As Marx put it, we don't tell workers that all such struggles are useless, but at the same time we do have to give workers in such struggles are true slogan of struggle rather than leaving them to struggle for such partial demands. Trotskyists tend to interpret that as meaning purely propagandistic posturing about the need at some point in the future for socialism. I take it as Marx did as meaning a struggle for socialist forms here and now.
Arthur Bough