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Tinkering won’t provide housing
THE juggernaut of a new policy that will stir up divisions and rancour among the borough’s council tenants is on the way.
Broadly, it will come down on council tenants who own second homes. At that simple level little can be found wrong with it.
But there are different types of second homes – and, as usual, the devil will be found in the small print.
Once – perhaps this can be dated to the pre-1960s – council homes were given to those at the bottom of the ladder.
Times have changed, living standards have risen, and many council tenants are no longer simply the low-paid and unskilled.
To some degree, social mobility over the years has changed the landscape of council housing.
Faced by an acute housing shortage, the council officials drew up a plan earlier this year to make the maximum use of existing housing stock by attempting to weed out second home-owners.
Putting aside moral and ethical questions, a tenant wealthy enough to buy a second home which he then lets must put his tenancy at jeopardy through a breach of his contract with the council.
However, what about a tenant who inherits a home in the country through the death of a relative? Is he to be penalised with the loss of his council home? Or, the tenant, who through a stroke of luck or by shrewd savings, finds himself able to buy a small flat or cottage in the country, is he to be denied this at the pain of losing his council home?
This new move by the council will also conjure up another argument: That perhaps it is time to abandon an inverted snobbish approach to council housing, and accept that tenants have as much right as private owners, within reason, to possess a second home.
But shouldn’t we face the real problem that since the 1980s there has been a scandalous under-investment in social housing – it started under Thatcher and has continued unabated under New Labour.
New Labour pretends that the extraordinary housing crisis in Britain can be alleviated by encouraging property companies to allocate part of their developments to social housing.
In Camden this will mean that a few hundred low-rental flats will become available in the current financial year.
Contrast this with the housing waiting list of 16,000 – a queue lengthening every week.
And contrast this with the 1950s when, under a Tory government, 300,000 new homes were built every year!
Tinkering with tenancies can become a way of ignoring the real problem – and politicians may prefer it that way.
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