Saturday 26 October Assemble 11.30am Piccadilly – Regent Street St. James’s, SW1Y, London (Piccadilly Circus)
Tommy Robinson is coming to London with a hate march to spread his racism and Islamophobia. Robinson is a fascist who founded the English Defence League. In July, he marched with 20,000 others, chanting Islamophobic and racist chants. The following week saw far right riots across the country.
Stand Up to Racism has called a unity demonstration against Robinson to show that we will not let the far right take over our streets. Our message is clear: stop the far right, unity over division. We’re asking every housing campaign, anti-racist and the thousands who pushed back the far right in August to join us.
Our message is “Migrants and refugees don’t cause the housing crisis”. Don’t let the far right gain from the misery caused by years of attacks on council housing, and a market that is fully out of control.
We can fight for the homes we need and we can push back the racists.
We are the many, they are the few. Together we can stop the far right.
Grenfell community campaigner Moyra Samuels introduces Peter Apps at Homes for All meeting, 12 October 2024.
Peter Apps is a Contributing Editor of Inside Housing and author of the Orwell Prize -winning book, Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen.
In the meeting Peter discusses the findings and impact of the Grenfell Inquiry following the Phase 2 report, getting to the core of who was responsible, and takes questions from housing activists.
The murderous failings revealed in the aftermath of the Grenfell fire, laid bare everything that is rotten with the financialisation of housing and the resulting damage and disregard to peoples lives.
Action for Fire Safety Justice protesting at Skypool, Nine Elms, Vauxhall, 2021
Media Release 27/08/2024 – Immediate Release
We were shocked to hear of the fire that engulfed a block of flats in Dagenham, East London in the early hours of Monday morning, 26 August 2024. This must have been such a traumatising experience for all the residents and the surrounding community, with thoughts of Grenfell too frightening to consider.
Thanks to the action of residents supporting each other and to the London Fire Brigade’s rapid response, an even worse outcome was averted.
It is shocking that seven years after the Grenfell fire, non-compliant cladding was still in place, and that the blocks “had a number of fire safety issues”.
“We were saddened but unfortunately not surprised to hear of the residential block fire in Dagenham. Anyone familiar with the building safety crisis knows that it’s another tragedy waiting to happen. The slow pace not only of remediation but also of regulation changes is absolutely unacceptable.”
The government needs to fund the immediate removal of combustible cladding across all housing, and draw up an emergency plan to address fire safety issues that put our lives at risk.
The residents and community in Grenfell were neglected and abandoned by those in power. Lessons must be learned, and this time, urgent support and care must be provided for the people of Dagenham.
Homes for All UK
ENDS
Notes for Editors
Homes For All is a broad based coalition of housing campaigners and organisations, tenants and the labour and trade union movement. We are currently involved in a joint initiative with Defend Council Housing for council housing as the only solution to the housing crisis. 5 Point PLan for Council Housing
In a new report Securing the Future of Council Housing, 20 large Council landlords say: “the costs they need to maintain their council homes outstrip the income they have to pay these costs.”
Defend Council Housing welcomes this alarming Report. It sets out the threat to the future of council housing from under-funding of housing revenue accounts (HRAs). The Local Government Association estimates Councils will have HRA deficits of £3 billion over the next ten years.
Give stock-owning Councils a one-off payment of £644 million to compensate for the difference between increasing costs and rental income
Reopen the 2012 ‘debt-settlement’ (when the new ‘self-financing’ system was introduced) and readjust the ‘debt’ allocated to Councils
Introduce a 10-year rent settlement
Reintroduce ‘rent equalisation’
Invest in a new Green and Decent Homes programme“to meet the government’s climate, housing and growth objectives”, “on a similar scale to the original Decent Homes Programme”
This should “commit to providing this £12 billion over the next five years” to cover the cost of bringing all homes up to Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Rating C, addressing fire safety issues and meeting the original Decent Homes Standard.
Provide £23.5 billion capital funding for decarbonising existing council housing.
Reform Right To Buy to cut the loss of homes and allow councils to use receipts as they wish.
Defend Council Housing welcomes most of the demands and calls on these councils and others to work with them, and other tenants and residents, trade unions and housing campaigners, to make these demands a reality.
DCH's response says many of these demands are welcome but councils should go further and demand debt cancellation and the abolition of Right to Buy. The risk to tenants of failure to invest in council housing is very real and even worse than set out in the report. Tenants should not be further punished by increasing rents and service charges above inflation. DCH calls on councils to join with tenants, trade unions and housing campaigners to pressure government to make positive changes in council housing finance and management - the only way to end the housing crisis.
DCH says:
Debt cancellation
When Council housing finance was reorganised by Government in 2012, the new ‘self-financing’ system redistributed the combined existing housing debt between local authorities. Defend Council Housing and a range of other organisations including the Local Government Association, called instead for debt cancellation. Tenants had paid more in rent that the outstanding debt for previous house building programmes. In the 25 years to 2008 council tenants paid in to central Government £91 billion in rent, and in return Councils received ‘allowances’ of £60 billion. We think the time has come to press Government again for debt cancellation, which would end the historic robbery of tenants’ rents, and release an extra £1.3 billion a year to invest in existing and new council homes.
Decarbonising council housing
Councils are right to call for government funding, without which existing stock will not be decarbonised, destroying any prospects of achieving net zero.
Right to Buy
Restricting eligibility for Right ToBuy would be an improvement on the status quo, but the easiest way to stop the loss of stock would be to end RTB, as the devolved administrations have done in Wales and Scotland.
‘Rent equalisation’
We oppose any return to ‘rent equalisation’. This would be designed to introduce above-inflation council rent increases. When previously imposed, rents were driven up towards housing association rent levels (in part to try and overcome tenant resistance to privatisation of council housing stock through ‘transfer’ to housing associations). Rent increases were way above inflation and increases in earnings. More recently, it has been shown that for many tenants (especially but not only those on district heating networks) combined rent and service charges have increased beyond affordability. Some tenants face eviction because they cannot pay service charge increases of sometimes 200% or 300%. What we need today is a commitment that above-inflation rent and service charge increases will end. The existing Tory policy of CPI+1% should be abandoned.
Risk to tenants
Without central government funding HRAs sufficiently, Councils will not be able to maintain and renew existing housing, never mind fund a renaissance of council house building. The choice for the Government is “between increasing rents significantly, providing capital investment, or exposing tenants to intolerable safety and health risks.” But significantly increased rents and service charges and intolerable health and safety risks are already a reality for many tenants. Further rent increases will impoverish more tenants and drive up the housing benefit bill. Failure to deal with health and safety risks will undermine the future of council housing and increase the outrage of unacceptable living conditions.
Work together to demand change
Providing the capital investment on at least the scale proposed by Southwark Council and others in this Interim Report, is a necessary first step. We are keen to work with these and other councils, and with tenants and trade unions, to this end.
2016, November 23 – The Palace of Westminster, London : Tenants and housing campaigners protest outside parliament and call to Axe the Housing Act
And here we are again!
Another in a long line of attempts by the government to distract attention from its failure to solve the housing crisis by attempting to blame others. In 2016 the Housing Act identified better-off council tenants as the problem and the governments solution was to be ‘Pay to Stay’, which was defeated by a combination of local authorities saying it would be unworkable, and thousands of tenants and residents in the campaign we initiated.
This time the government returns to a familiar refrain – ‘Don’t blame us for the lack of council housing, blame migrants!’ The Consultation on reforms to social housing allocations, published 30 January 2024 has been dubbed ‘British homes for British workers’. Yet it contains no plans to increase the overall supply of council housing, only to restrict access further.
Homes for All and Defend Council Housing have initiated a statement in response. Many of our concerns are shared by charities and organisations in the sector. Fourteen housing bodies signed a letter opposing ‘British homes for British workers’ policy. The letter highlighted that 90% of new social housing lettings go to UK nationals.
This leaflet is available in hard copy. Contact us if you would like some to distribute.
Government not Migrants caused the housing crisis
It’s time to invest in council housing
The British homes for British workers agenda is racist and divisive. The proposed exclusions of people from applying for social housing, and the ill-considered and draconian new eviction provisions, both meet with our determined opposition. Neither of them will do anything for those people who have been systematically shut out of the housing market by the effects of past government policies.
Government investment in a mass council housing building programme, including requisitioning of empty homes and abolition of ‘right to buy’
Rent controls and secure tenancies in the private rental sector. Robust regulation of housing associations
New funding to repair and refurbish existing council housing – do not demolish
Adequate funding for accessibility, fire safety, and for retrofitting and thermal insulation
Planning for the people and the planet, and not for developers’ profits
The government misunderstands the purpose of housing policy
The government misunderstands the purpose of housing policy, which is to ensure that every household has a decent, secure, affordable home. Housing policy does not exist for the government to propagate a narrow and exclusive version of patriotism, or to devise double jeopardy schemes for those who have committed offences or engaged in behaviour that the government does not like, or to chuck people out of their homes. Housing policy does not exist to run deliberately divisive election campaigns. But all of that is happening here.
The housing crisis – for some
The housing problem is one of unequal distribution. The 2021 census reported that there were 24,782,800 households in England and Wales. There were 26,394,777 dwellings, so the number of homes exceeded the number of households by 1,611,977.
Action on Empty Homes report that numbers of long-term empty homes rose yet again in 2023 by 12,556 (or 5%) to 261,189, while long-term empties are now at their highest level since 2011 (excepting the special pandemic conditions of 2020).
The Consultation document repeatedly refers to the £11.5bn Affordable Homes programme. However, this provides very little new social rent housing. 40% of the 2022/23 output consists of ‘unaffordable affordable housing’ which is not open to those households in the highest need. Another 45% is Affordable Rent, and the Shelter report ‘A Capital in Crisis’ (2020) showed that London Affordable Rent (the variant of affordable rent most used in the capital) is not actually affordable for lower income working families. That leaves only 15% for new social rent homes, many of which are in fact funded to support demolitions.
Government policy is directly responsible for the scarcity of social rent housing, which the current policy initiatives purport to address.
Council housing pays for itself
The Five Point Plan requires government investment. The Shelter report ‘Building for our future: A vision for social housing’ has shown in much detail how investment in council housing pays for itself in reduced benefit costs, while enhancing social inclusion and averting the unnecessary costs of social disadvantage. This is true investment, bringing back a return greater than the initial outlay.
There are some easy wins
Some proposals in the Five Point Plan are easy wins. The Right to Buy has reduced the social housing stock and has caused the scarcity to which this consultation refers. It should be abolished, to preserve the social housing stock which we have now.
The government should revise and amend the National Planning Policy Framework (December 2023 version) paragraph 65 and footnote 31 which does NOT require replacement of the affordable housing floorspace demolished in redevelopment and regeneration schemes.There should be a full and tenure specific replacement of such homes in such circumstances, along with full compliance with affordable housing policies for the additional homes built.
Retain the space for local policy initiatives
These government proposals remove the local initiative and responsibility for many aspects of allocations. Many local authorities have retained a social awareness and a social conscience in declining to enact the exclusionary policies which have been permitted by the government on an optional basis in the past.
No to UK residence and local connection tests
Well over 80% of Britain’s housing is allocated solely by market mechanisms, creating and reinforcing inequalities which reveal the diversity of applicants and residents in social and affordable housing. The government should accept diversity and stop scaremongering about it. UK residence tests are unnecessary and show that the government does not want to assist those in the highest need – and is not concerned about equalities.
Local connection tests are discriminatory towards those who are homeless, but who have a limited connection to any specific area because of their homelessness. Mandatory tests would make that problem much worse, affecting the already socially excluded groups who are protected under the Equality Act, 2000.
No to mandatory income tests
The proposal for mandatory income tests ignores the strength that comes from mixed income communities in council housing and other social housing tenures. Nobody gains from making social housing a tenure exclusively for the poor.
In response to consultation question 22, consulting on minimum income thresholds for applicants ‘to incentivise being in work or to ensure that the household can afford the property’, we say that too many providers are already using affordability tests to keep the most economically vulnerable households out of social housing. These barriers to access are a leading cause of homelessness, and they operate in a structurally racist manner. See more detail in two detailed reports that show how Housing Associations refuse to house the poorest. The government should ensure that poor families have enough income to afford the rent and service charges on a suitable social rent property. Landlord Affordability Tests for such properties should be made illegal.
Anti social behaviour tests and eviction plans
Anti social behaviour already provides grounds for possession claims. There are anti social behaviour orders, introductory tenancies, starter tenancies and demoted tenancies. Research for the Home Office (The drivers of perceptions of anti-social behaviour) shows that nuisance behaviour is closely linked with social exclusion, which can be ameliorated by initiatives to improve the physical environment and to foster community cohesion. Instead of promoting exclusionary policies, the government should fund and develop mediation schemes to build the capacity of residents to resolve disputes, along with work, education, training, and cultural activities for alienated youth.
The government’s eviction plans make no reference to where people are going to live afterwards. But this is the question we need to be asking.
The crude and draconian requirement for social landlords to evict people gives the lie to the claim that the objective here is to house more ‘British’ people.
Proposed exclusions related to the Terrorism Act
The government is seeking to scaremonger people, using double jeopardy policies again. The definition of terrorism is questionable, owing more to selective foreign policy objectives than to housing policy. We therefore oppose the planned exclusions of applicants related to the Terrorism Act.
Conclusion
We note that the government has failed to secure the support of those who primarily own and manage social housing, and of those concerned with housing needs and homelessness, and immigrant and refugee welfare.
The National Housing Federation, Local Government Association, Association of Retained Council Housing, National Federation of ALMOs, PlaceShapers, Shelter, Crisis, St Mungo’s, Generation Rent, the No Accommodation Network, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, the Welsh Refugee Council, and Tai Pawb have all signed a letter of opposition.
These proposals should be rejected, and replaced by investment in homes and communities instead.
Mould is political projection on Houses of Parliament 13 March 2024 – NEF / Homes for Us
These are the words of Amaran, a children’s doctor working in South Yorkshire. He is featured in the film ‘Mould is Political’ which was projected on Wednesday last week on the Houses of Parliament. Homes for All joined the protest alongside around 80 other campaigners.
See a clip of the film and the protest outside parliament here (2 mins)
See the whole film here (12 mins) which includes a protest in Manchester also supported by H4A.
Register now for the action and film screening. Wednesday 13 March, 6:30pm – 8:30pm Homes for All be joining NEF, Homes For Us, Medact, Inclusion London and many more, to show the government that our homes must be safe.
Up to 100 people joined Fuel Poverty Action on 6 March. Homes for All and activists from Unite Community, the National Pensioners Convention (NPC), Greenpeace and many more turned up outside Parliament for the Unite 4 Energy For All protest to highlight the number of people suffering due to cold and damp homes.
The Spring Budget will continue government’s policies which actively contributed to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths.
Speakers called for radical change in the interests of working class people and an end to the drive for profits and protecting private companies.
