Another world is possible

As a Lambeth councillor I see at first hand the misery caused by the lack of council housing. We have over 20,000 people on our waiting list. This is replicated around London. Nationally there are over a million households on the waiting list.

 
And unless, and until we start building council housing people on housing lists will languish without hope.

 
It is a fundamental right for people to have a decent home. But while this government have repeatedly acted to make the housing crisis worse by their disastrous ‘right to buy’ scheme, John McDonnell, Labour’s shadow chancellor gave this commitment at the Labour Party conference – that when Labour return to government we will build decent and secure homes for people to live in.

 
Ever since Margaret Thatcher brought in right to buy our council housing stock has been drastically eroded. For too long council houses weren’t built. It was almost as if the very term ‘council house’ was stigmatised. Under Jeremy and John this stigma has gone.

 
We can build a million new council homes. We can invest to make it happen and we can enable local authorities to build.

 
The Tories still wear the mantle of Thatcherism. Quite frankly, I think they are worse.

 
Recently , housing associations were given just six days to tell housing minister Greg Clarke if they are going along with his plan to avoid a battle in Parliament on the government’s extension of ‘right to buy’.

 
Not-for-profit associations have been offered the chance to ‘voluntarily’ agree to this – or face being brought under the Treasury and then privatised and deregulated. This will potentially mean a huge loss of social housing as housing associations become profit-making businesses.

 
Six days is no time to consider the implications for the future of the organization, the tenants or the workers, including the many Unite members.

 
This runs in parallel with plans to force councils to sell off high value properties – a move that is particularly devastating in London and for areas like Lambeth. Just in my ward alone we have the spectacle of former council housing in the hands of private landlords.

 
Spiralling rents

 
The cost of housing in London is astronomical. We now have the phenomena of ‘social cleansing’ whole swathes of London. I would argue that it is not only social cleansing; it is economic cleansing as well.

 
Owning a home has become a distant dream with people being forced into the private rented sector.

 
Spiralling rent and substandard conditions demand that we introduce rent controls and tenant security. At the moment housing benefit cuts are only punishing households and increasingly funding private landlords because of the housing shortage.

 
Too many in the private rented sector suffer at the hands of rogue landlords. Is it too much to ask that we have decent homes?

 
Building homes is not only a social good – it will also grow the economy, create jobs and proper apprenticeships.

 
John McDonnell finished his speech by saying that another world is possible, and I would say it can be built.