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Margaret Thatcher |
Right to Buy comes home to roost
A new book helps explain the events that have led to Camden’s current social housing crisis, writes Grace Livingstone
Where the Other Half Lives: Lower Income Housing in a Neoliberal World.
Edited by Sarah Glynn. Pluto Press £16.99
SITTING in the council chamber earlier this summer listening to Labour councillor Roger Robinson recall the days of the great tenants’ rent strike and urging today’s activists to form a united tenants’ front, I got a sense of history being made.
As Frank Dobson MP explained how the Camden Council that he led in the 1970s had bought up thousands of private homes, freeing tenants from the misery and arbitrariness of private landlords, he was heckled by pensioner Ellen Luby, a veteran of those tenants’ battles. Bombastic as ever, she machine-gunned the panel with insults and bullets of advice. I realised that the people of Camden have a long and fascinating history of fighting for affordable homes.
I had come to the meeting with a group from Holly Lodge estate in Highgate. Today’s Town Hall leaders plan to sell a large number of council flats on this mock-Tudor estate, which rises up over Hampstead Heath. It was built in the 1920s by the Lady Workers Homes Company to house professional women. So many men were killed in the First World War that many women never married. These women – librarians, academics, researchers, secretaries – were pioneers in the workforce and some of the original “Lady Workers” still live on the estate today.
They lived in bedsits and shared bathrooms on the landing with two or three other women. But the bedsit blocks have fallen into disrepair; they have no heating and many tenants don’t want to share bathrooms anymore. The council say they can’t afford to do them up, unless they sell off the majority of flats. This is short-sighted because it will deprive generations of Camden residents of the chance to live on this beautiful estate.
Meanwhile, those who bought their bedsits under the Right to Buy laws, now face possible eviction or compulsory purchase orders because they can’t afford to buy back their own refurbished flats.
And it’s not just Holly Lodge. The Lib Dems, who always sound so reasonable on Question Time, are auctioning off beautiful Victorian street properties and causing great upset with plans for demolition on Maiden Lane estate.
Where the Other Half Lives: Lower Income Housing in a Neoliberal World shows that what’s happening in Camden is not unique. It argues that “Neoliberalism” – better known to most people as Thatcherism or free market economics – has led to a housing crisis: a rise in homelessness and repossessions, exorbitant house prices and a drastic fall in the amount of cheap rented housing.
The book reveals that the attack on council housing was a key part of Margaret Thatcher’s drive to roll back the state. Government spending on housing fell 60 per cent between 1979 and 1994, falling from 7.3 per cent to just 2 per cent of total public spending. Thatcher urged councils to sell housing stock to save money on repairs and this money was used to fund huge tax cuts for the rich. Tenants were encouraged to buy their own homes. As Thatcher said: “Why shouldn’t [council tenants] have a chance to buy and hand something on to their children? Why shouldn’t they have the chance to become little capitalists?”
But although Right to Buy was popular, councils were not allowed to spend the receipts on building new houses, so it has led to a long-term fall in the amount of council housing. The number of new council homes built fell from 74,835 in 1980 to just 290 in 1997.
The authors show that New Labour continued the onslaught against cheap public housing. More than one million council homes were sold or transferred to housing associations by the New Labour government.
The book will be very useful to housing activists in Camden because it explains how the government is forcing councils to privatise homes. For example, the government’s Decent Homes programme, which is being applied to Holly Lodge, orders councils to bring public housing stock up to a minimum standard. At first glance, this sounds like a corrective to the Thatcher years of neglect, but councils are only offered government funding if they agree to part-privatise their housing stock.
The book is not an easy read. Written by academics, it is jammed with jargon and over-long sentences. But it is worth bulldozing through, because it’s packed with useful information for housing activists and anyone who wants to know how free market dogma has caused housing misery for millions.
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