Defend Council Housing?
Oct 30 2008 13:43
Hi folks,
Aint been on here for a while, so erm, Hi!
But just wondered if anyone on here has any experience of working with or in the organisation/campaign 'Defend Council Housing' and if so, what your thoughts are?
Im interested in a vague sort of way, and am considering attending their annual conference, but wondered if anyone had any stories to tell, either good or bad?
Ive heard they are SWP-trot-frontgroup, but then I hear that about most things...
Anything appreciated,
Cheers, S.
In Camden, north London, council tenants voted against transfer to an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) - a kind of privatisation. Out of spite, central govt. promptly cancelled £283 million in funds for council housing refurbishments in the borough - which had originally been promised irrespective of the vote outcome. It was the local DCH group that led the campaign for a no vote; the leading spokesman in Camden and chair of DCH nationally is indeed a veteran SWerP, but that has nothing to do with the unpopularity of stock transfer. But DCH's basic strategy seems to be to lobby the remaining Old Labour pro-council housing faction of the the Labour Party to push for greater investment in council housing. - up to now with little success.
But the credit crisis is causing a rethink on the role of social housing - various propositions have been made, such as;
to limit evictions of rising numbers of mortgage defaulters (who councils often have a duty to house) councils could purchase their homes and rent them back to the defaulters, so avoiding their homelessness.
Measures to bail out the almost bankrupt house building industry;
the purchase of unsold housing and land stock from Barrets, Laing etc (as a start, last week 335 homes were purchased for £13 million out of a fund of £200 million);
govt. finance of a large scale social housing programme - some believe that the longterm effect of an increase in social housing would be to revive the property market - taking pressure off house prices by providing an alternative option to potential 1st time buyers. Also schemes to make it easier to move between different forms of tenure - renting, part-ownership, full purchase etc.
Some Labour MPs have recently been urging the government to nationalise parts of the house building industry, claiming it will save thousands of jobs and solve the shortage of social housing at a relatively low cost. Jon Cruddas, who recently declined the post of housing minister, said that with builders’ share prices ‘disintegrating’ and the price of land falling it was time to consider 'radical policies'.