When two rights make a wrong

It’s taken 35 years for the disaster of the Tory sell off of council homes known as right to buy to fully evolve as the hidden hand behind our current housing crisis.

It turns out that now the right to buy has turned into right to buy to sell to landlords to rent out.

Even on its own terms of success – the creation of a property owning democracy – it has failed. Four out of 10 of the council properties sold off at knock down prices have been sold on again to private landlords.

The right to buy depleted the council housing stock by selling off the best properties in the best locations at knock down prices. Those homes lost by councils were never replaced and councils were blocked from using the funds generated to build new council homes.

Don’t expect to find those figures proving that often right to buy has ended in right to rent out from the government. We only know them because specialist housing magazine Inside Housing knew what difficult questions to ask and who they should be directed at.

And don’t expect the Tory-supporting media to follow up the bad news. As the Telegraph headline put it last week on housing: “Crisis, what crisis?”

What else do we now know? Private rents have been pushed up 12 per cent in the last year alone.  And up by more in London.

The cost of housing benefits has risen in line with the rise in private rents. The Tories are full off clamping down on housing benefit by attacking those making the claims.

But they have barely a word for the private landlords who are actually pocketing the money. Are the private landlords milking housing benefit Tory supporters by any chance?

Evictions

A new report from the ministry of justice – mortage and landlord possession statistics April to June 2015– shows a near 50 per cent rise the in number of court actions to evict tenants from private and social housing. The increase exactly coincides with the introduction of housing benefits cuts.

There are no up to date statistics which measure those tenants who were evicted without court action. Given the rise in rents, tenants in arrears tend to increase, making it easier to evict.

The upward pressure on rents is worse if you are a student, who have seen student rents pushed up by 25% in the last three years. Their debt-fuelled incomes, based on student loans, are being swallowed up by rents, with no sign of that ending.

The cost of buying homes is also on the rise. The average cost of a home is just under ÂŁ200,000. In London it is ÂŁ480,000.

Average pay is ÂŁ26,500, ÂŁ41,000 in London. Without a big deposit the cost of the average house is seven times the average salary.

In London, 10 times the average salary.

The problem’s cause is simple. We have needed to build at least 250,000 homes a year. At present we’re only building around 125,000 and we have years of ‘catch up’ to make up for.

Those figures suggest the construction industry should be booming to meet demand – but it’s in the doldrums. A rapidly rising population has created booming demand for more housing – but it is not being met.

And the rising cost of renting, and to buy a home, do not appear to be fully taken into account by any of the inflation measures.

The government solution is to subsidise private house purchase which will work its way through into higher asking prices. And they now want to press on with the latest version of ‘right to buy’, forcing housing associations to sell off social housing.

As an approach it’s a vicious cycle of déjà vu, all over again and again and again. The latest right to buy has been taken up by the current generation of political fools busy lighting the road to further housing crises.

Where do they think this road will lead? Generation buy has become generation rent.

But where next for generation rent? With more people chasing a roof over their heads – and fewer roofs available – the next stop could be generation homeless. One Tory think tank blogger has even suggested building cheap slums and shanty towns.

For Unite, the housing crisis is not going to be solved by the current range of measures being pursued by government.

Paul Kershaw, who represents housing workers in Unite, said current Tory policies are heading in the wrong direction.

Cap rents not benefits

He told UniteLive, “The housing crisis is an emergency. To give immediate relief we need to cap rents (not benefit), give private tenants secure tenancies and regulate landlords to give immediate relief.

“But we need a massive programme of council house building to really address the shortage.  Most social housing is now owned by housing associations.

“In the past they might have spoken out about housing need but now some are actually encouraging the government to go further by privatising housing associations.

“In my Unite branch we have members working with rough sleepers in London seeing the extreme end of the housing crisis.   In our branch we want to work with other Unite members and tenants to build a massive fight back for social housing.

“We aren’t going to get that from the established ‘leaders’ in the social housing sector we’re going to have to do that ourselves. Some housing association bosses have spoken about how ‘exciting’ it would be to work with a private contractor.

“They argue we aren’t going to see investment in social housing because of austerity.  That means we have to fight austerity.”