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Minister ought not to stigmatise tenants in this way
• HOUSING minister Caroline Flint is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by suggesting that council tenants should sign contracts making their tenancy dependent on their efforts to seek a job.
This creates a number of conflicts for councils who have duties to address homelessness, rendering those contracts worthless and unenforceable.
Imposing penalties on targeted sections of a community to address unemployment and deprivation is crazy and unworkable.
One needs to identify causes before suggesting cures.
The real problem has been that ministers are failing to recognise that council housing is an essential chain-link in society which we can’t afford to stigmatise as ghettos full of scroungers. For generations governments have looked at council housing as a burden to be “disposed” of, so it suits their agendas to stereotype council tenants in this way.
Historical housing debt nationally has been clawed back by successive governments long ago. If left alone, through affordable rents council housing is self-funding. Governments penalise us through nicking receipts from right-to-buy sales and by fixing government subsidies against councils by stacking a pile of hoops in front of us to jump through. This results in councils allowing council estates to fall into disrepair and inflate rents through unpooled service charges. It is the government’s own policies of not building council homes which has resulted in the most vulnerable – not just the unemployed – being prioritised for council homes.
A solution to the problem exists, but this requires courage and commitment from our governments. Communities can only be healthy if the main ingredient is present, and that’s a decent affordable home for all who want it with no strings attached. By investing in top quality council housing, by building and maintaining 100 per cent decent, attractive, affordable council homes, we will attract the nurse, the bricklayer, the doctor, the chef, the plumber – and this will create thriving communities.
A healthy community is made up of people who need to feel valued members of society. If sections of that community feel abandoned and even targeted by their government, it is easy to abandon the will to contribute back into society.
To punish them for this is immoral and obscene.
Meric Apak
Chair Camden Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations, NW1
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