In July, Labour’s then Levelling-up Shadow Minister, Lisa Nandy, categorically stated that her party is absolutely committed to maintaining the sell-off of council homes. Right-to-Buy, she told the Housing 2023 conference in Manchester, was a means ‘to extend wealth ownership, asset ownership, to people in every nation, every region in this country’. She went on to say to The Times newspaper that ‘telling working class people that they can’t own their own homes is just unacceptable’. This is another naked appeal by Labour to the better-off sections of the working class while signalling that the party continues to have zero interest in housing the poor.
It was something of a volte face for Nandy, a ‘soft left’ Labourite who only last year told the party conference that her mantra would be ‘council housing, council housing, council housing’ and espoused the delusion that, under a Labour government, social housing could grow to be the country’s second-largest housing tenure after home ownership. Such views did little to endear her to the Labour leadership, and she was ignominiously dumped in the latest Labour reshuffle.
Right-to-Buy – the massive discounts afforded to tenants of council homes to enable them to buy their homes – has been the single largest contributor to the destruction of publicly-owned housing since 1979. While in 1979 there were 6.5 million council homes, now there are 2.2 million – the majority of them having been compulsorily transferred to housing associations from the 1980s onwards. 4.4 million people have been forced into the ever-growing private rented sector. Meanwhile 1.2 million households are currently on council waiting lists for housing. The majority of tenants who bought under Right-to-Buy were better-off workers in secure employment. Many sold up as soon as they were able, and today former council properties make up more than 40% of the private rental sector. The Local Government Association predicts a further net loss of 57,000 council properties by 2030.
Research by the London Tenants’ Federation shows that in London alone 22,892 social rented homes have been demolished over the past ten years, with only 12,050 new units delivered. By far the worst offenders were the Labour-run boroughs of Ealing and Southwark, with more than 4,000 homes demolished apiece. It is clear that under a Labour government the vast sell-off and destruction of social housing will continue apace.
Cat Wiener
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 296 October/November 2023
