In April 2021, an ITV investigation uncovered housing conditions in the south London borough of Croydon that were described by regulators as ‘the worst we’ve ever seen’. Footage of dripping water, crumbling ceilings and thick black mould prompted more reports, with the news programme most recently showcasing a west London council flat with a gaping hole in the bathroom ceiling and black mould spreading up the bedroom walls; the family has lived for two years unable to use electricity in the bathroom because of the risk of electrocution. In November, tenants of the housing association Clarion (whose CEO, Clare Miller, is on a salary of £350,000) revealed they had been living in a hostel for six months after being moved out of 500 mouldy and vermin infested homes in Mitcham, south London. These are just a few examples of the conditions faced by hundreds and hundreds of working class people in local authority and housing association homes across Britain. A Housing Ombudsman review published in October 2021 revealed that more than one in ten (13%) homes in the social rented sector do not meet Decent Homes standards. This is a sector that is being left to sink into squalor as successive governments, both Conservative and Labour, pursue the vast profits to be made from the privatisation and commodification of housing. ALEX SCURR and CAT WIENER report.
Social housing: death by a thousand cuts
In 1979, 42% of all people in Britain lived in council housing; today that figure is less than 8%. The ‘social rented’ sector (increasingly dominated by housing associations) now makes up just 17% of all housing tenures. Two million council homes have been lost to the private sector under the Right to Buy (RtB) policy introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1981 and continued under the Labour governments of 1997-2010. The process was accelerated by the ConDem government, which extended RtB to housing association homes in 2012.
These lost homes have never been replaced. In the past decade just 147,409 ‘social rent’ homes have been built in England, while 282,540 were sold or demolished. Over 20 years, the net loss jumps to half a million. Of 58,759 so-called ‘affordable homes’ built in the past year in England only 6,644 were actually new social housing; the vast majority were shared ownership or ‘affordable rent’ – completely unaffordable for most working people. Between March 2020 and April 2021, investment in new social housing fell by more than a fifth, from £10.2bn to £7.9bn. The Big Issue calculated that just one new social rent home was built that year for every 192 people on the housing waiting list; this is the second lowest number since records began, and almost half of all councils in England did not build any. Meanwhile the National Housing Federation (NHF) estimates that nearly two million people need a council home – almost double the official waiting list figure. Alongside this has gone the demolition of council homes on a mass scale, as local authorities in major cities sell off public land and buildings to private developers.
The inevitable result is chronic overcrowding, and rising homelessness. The English Housing Survey for 2020-2021 puts overcrowding in the social rented sector at 8% – the highest level recorded; in London the figure is far higher, at 14.6% (12.6% in the private rented sector). In half of all overcrowded households, children shared a bedroom with an adult. In just over a quarter, adults had to sleep in living rooms, corridors, kitchens and even bathrooms. In the context of the pandemic lockdowns over the last two years, such levels of overcrowding have been devastating. In the east London borough of Newham, which had one of the highest Covid-19 death rates in the country, 25.2% of all housing is overcrowded. Overcrowding is particularly acute for black and minority ethnic households, at 17% compared to 6% for white households.
Squeezing the poor
The majority of those living in council homes are the poorest sections of the working class. 50% of social housing tenants are in the lowest income quintile, with a further 26% in the next lowest. 55% live in a household where one or more members has a long-term illness or a disability.
Over a million social rented households in England rely on the housing element of Universal Credit – a figure that grew 46% between March 2020 and February 2021. 79% of those claiming Universal Credit have struggled to pay for at least one essential item such as heating, council tax or clothes, an NHF survey found in August 2021. This comes on top of many tenants continuing to struggle with the Bedroom Tax, introduced in 2013, which slashes housing benefit by 14% if a household is deemed to have a ‘spare bedroom’, 25% if more. The DWP’s own figures show that this punitive tax has forced 76% of families affected to cut back on food and other essentials. Now they face a rent hike of 4.1% in April – alongside a rise in council tax, rampant inflation and soaring energy bills. A quarter of social housing tenants are already struggling to pay rent.
The provision of publicly owned housing on a mass scale is the only way to address the housing crisis facing the working class. But instead we face an ever-diminishing and decaying pool of homes whose tenants have been treated with contempt and abandoned by local and national government. The capitalists have no interest in investing in building or maintaining homes unless it makes them profits. If we want decent housing we will have to fight for it. Campaigns across the country are emerging, mostly on a small and local scale – opposing council plans to infill or demolish their estates, or ‘decant’ homeless families far from their jobs and schools. But together we are stronger and we need to unite to fight for a system that provides safe, permanent and affordable housing as a basic right.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 286, February/March 2022
