Homes for All wishes to thank everyone who joined the housing lobby on Wednesday outside parliament.
Speakers representing 13 housing & planning campaigns and also Fuel Poverty Action, the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) and Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) spoke in anger about the scale of the housing and planning emergency and the urgency to keep fighting – demanding radical solutions to address decades of neglect.
The Labour Party plan for “£2 billion new investment to support biggest boost in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation” will not.
But the day was rightfully DPAC’s with disabled people facing inhumane cuts to benefits and their mass demo from Downing St to the rally was just brilliant.
Homes for All joined and spoke the demonstration called by SHAPE – Southwark Housing and Planning Emergency
Over 600 marched for council housing and for justice for Southwark’s diverse communities. Speakers stressed that the community in Peckham will not submit to the rule of developers. A large range of groups came to express solidarity with the people of Southwark including: Aylesham Community Action; Peckham Vision; Latin Elephant; Southwark Group of Tenants Organisation; Southwark Defend Council Housing; South London Stand Up to Racism; Southwark UNITE; Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL); Southwark Notes; Plush SE16 No price on culture; London Renters Union (Lewisham Branch) ; Southwark Acorn and many more.
The demonstration united people of all ages and backgrounds in an angry but carnival-like procession. Highlights included the local drummers, a choir and a massive boost to the demo when HASL’s 60 to 80 members joined at Burgess Park, chanting “3,4,5” which is the number of bedrooms they are fighting for Southwark to rehouse them in.
Speakers included Local Labour Councillor David Parton who expressed his strong opposition to Berkeley Homes’ Aylesham Centre proposal – which is now due to provide an insulting 12% so called-affordable homes in a scheme of 877 flats. Local Lib Dem group Leader on Southwark Council, who is a ward Councillor where the Borough Triangle overdevelopment is proposed, also spoke and brought along other Councillors. Speakers from Stand Up to Racism and others talked about the threat of the far right and the importance of standing in solidarity with migrants and refugees. Migrants didn’t cause the housing crisis!
The demonstration was featured on TV on both BBC London News and ITV London News, and in various publications.
Hundreds joined the London Renters Union in central London on Saturday for a rally which then marched to Foxtons Estate agents and piled dozens of empty boxes in front of their window to demonstrate the impact of soaring rents and how it damages peoples lives.
Speeches, chants and singing made clear that the fight against rising rents, rogue landlords and Section 21 evictions will continue.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Defend Council Housing activist, Paul Burnham explains what’s behind Michael Gove’s new plans for housing.
Paul speaking at a Haringey anti-demolition meeting in 2016
Leveling Up Secretary Michael Gove has unveiled a ‘long-term plan for housing’ based on ten principles – but his principles do NOT include providing a decent, secure and affordable home for everyone.
Instead, there will be additional subsidies to support the demolition of existing estates. We need to push back, and refurbish rather than demolish.
Gove wants to build garden villages such as ‘the outstanding Welborne development’ at Fareham in Hampshire, ‘championed by my colleague Suella Braverman’. There could be as little as 7.3% affordable housing in this 6,000-home scheme. Fareham Council’s own housing service even made a formal objection to the low level of affordable housing provision.
Building unaffordable housing is part of the problem.
Full article here – Michael Gove speech and estate demolitions 06/09/2023
Homes for All joined the St Mungo’s demo with other campaigners who were also invited to speak in support of the strike and wider issues. We called for proper funding and resources for homeless services, and decent, safe, secure housing for clients and workers.
