“Dissatisfaction with the government is the real dynamic of democracy, the elemental force of political action. How on earth can people be satisfied when the lack of houses is such a fertile source of human misery?”
Nye Bevan
We’re in the middle of the deepest cost-of-living crisis in generations, which has become a permanent cost-of-living emergency for millions. Yet the whole political establishment seems intent on never-ending austerity.
As a new Government approaches, we need to mobilise for policies that could address the depth of the crises we face, including the 10 Workers Can’t Wait demands. To help build this campaign initiative, we are publishing a daily blog on the importance on each of these demands. Today, Matt Willgress looks at the need for “homes for all.”
Current statistics on homelessness are a national disgrace and are another reason why Sunak and Co. should hang their heads in shame when they are booted out of Downing Street in July.
Research from Shelter in December 2023 showed at least 309,000 people in England were without a home, including almost 140,000 children. This represented an astonishing increase of 14%, 38,100 people, in one year.
In other words, 104 people in England were made homeless each day. Digging deeper into the research, over 3,000 people are sleeping rough on any given night (26% increase) and 279,400 are living in temporary accommodation (14% increase) – most of whom are families. There are also 20,000 people in hostels or supported accommodation.
The overall picture is that while homelessness in 2010 when the Tories came to power was at less than half of the shameful level it is at today, spending on dealing with this issue is well below what it was when Tory ideologically-driven austerity started with a bang in 2010.
And the homelessness crisis can be seen as the tip of the iceberg of an ever-deepening housing crisis, which sadly none of the ‘mainstream’ parties General Election manifestos have anywhere near ambitious enough proposals to even start to fix.
Other elements of the housing crisis include no-fault evictions, with more than 26,000 section 21 notices issued in five years since proposals for a ban were announced but not implemented.
Greedy landlords are also making big money, with private rent levels more and more out of control. To give just one statistic, average UK private rents increased by 9.2% in the 12 months to March 2024
And Labour revealed last week as part of the General Election campaign new data that showed £750m per year was “draining from leaky homes” due to landlords failing to insulate them.
Nationally, there are 1.3 million households on housing waiting lists and 112,000 households in temporary accommodation, including 145,000 children.
And the situation is getting worse, with a total of 22,023 social homes either sold or demolished last year in England, yet just 9,561 were built.
The scale of this crisis can only be resolved by radical action and investment, including through the building of council housing on a massive scale.
This is why Shelter and other housing groups are demanding that the next government funds 90,000 social rent homes a year, whilst the Local Government Association (which includes Labour’s own councillors) is calling for 100,000 a year. Inside Housing meanwhile wrote to all the political parties calling for a commitment in the General Election to fund that amount at least.
Such a council house-building programme would also have great benefits to the economy and in creating employment, and could be central to the real Green New Deal people and planet so desperately need.
Alongside this of vital necessity would improving existing housing, which requires more funding than is currently available, and decarbonising existing council housing in order to help tackle the climate emergency.
We also need action to put renters first rather than profit-making landlords, including through meaningful rent controls, secure tenancies and a charter of private-tenants’ rights as included in Labour’s 2019 Manifesto, and supported in part or whole by Labour Mayors such as Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham.
Is this radical approach possible? Labour’s own history suggests so, and Martin Wicks of the Labour campaign for Council Housing is worth quoting at length on this.
“Under far worse economic conditions than we face today, the Atlee government, with a debt to GDP ratio of 270%, made a council housing programme their first housing priority. Health Minister Anueran Bevan tripled the grant and increased it from 40 to 60 years. In response to demands on the 1945 government Bevan said:
‘Dissatisfaction with the government is the real dynamic of democracy, the elemental force of political action. How on earth can people be satisfied when the lack of houses is such a fertile source of human misery?’“
Martin adds that “The Atlee government was pressured by the widespread squatters movement. Today, the shortage of good quality social rent homes is once again “a fertile source of human misery”. Pressure needs to be brought to bear on the new government to take the action necessary to begin to begin to resolve the housing crisis. It will not be done without a renaissance of council housing. The 109,000 households in temporary accommodation and the more than 1.2 million households on housing waiting lists are not about to get mortgages. They need secure tenancies to rescue them from the private rented sector.”
We in the Labour Assembly Against Austerity pledge to work with this campaign, Defend Council Housing, tenants’ groups and others to again build a massive movement on housing, as part of greater mobilisations and co-ordination for an end to the establishment’s “permanent austerity” consensus.
As the ‘Workers Can’t Wait’ demand sets out in full, the route to homes for all is clear – no evictions or repossessions; tackle the homelessness emergency; and, crucially, fix the housing crisis with a mass council house building programme.
If the capitalist system can’t afford homes for all, then maybe we can’t afford to have the capitalist system anymore?
- You can find the Worker’s Can’t Wait demands – and join over 22,000 in adding your support here.
- We’re publishing a series of articles for each of the Workers Can’t Wait demands, you can find them as they are published here.
