Anti- Social Housing?

Future of Social Housing?

A report from Inside Housing Magazine that has reached SOYMB highlight the madness of housing policy under capitalism......

Edited from original articles from Inside Housing, Friday 28th October 2011:

Councils will demolish thousands of homes to slash the amount of debt they take on under the imminent reform of the housing subsidy system. Some authorities have drawn up plans in a matter of months this year to knock down hundreds of homes for financial gain. Other councils have fast-tracked proposals, an Inside Housing investigation has found.

They have acted because of an in-built ‘demolition deadline’ in plans to scrap the housing revenue account. Under the system the majority of town halls in England will take on a share of the existing £21 billion national housing debt based on the number of properties they own. But stock set to be demolished before 2017 will not be included in the calculations - providing a sizeable financial incentive to demolish. It is understood the number of homes councils told the Communities and Local Government department they will demolish exceeded its expectations.

Nottingham and Birmingham councils have drawn up some of the most eye-catching plans - proposing to flatten more than 2,000 homes between them. All councils argue the homes picked would be costly to maintain and would not have a long-term future anyway.

Michael Gelling, chair of the Tenants’ and Residents’ Organisations of England, said: ‘You have all this pressure [waiting lists] on the social housing sector and this will make it worse.’

In a paper seen by Nottingham Council’s executive board last month, the council, which currently has 13,000 people on its waiting list, said its arm’s-length management organisation had assessed all 29,000 of its homes as a result of the HRA reforms. Demolishing 973 homes would reduce its HRA debt by £10.2 million. But the plans could prove controversial in some areas - 50 per cent of residents responded to consultation on one 209-home estate, with 51 per cent of those saying they favoured demolition.

Birmingham plans to flatten up to 1,279 homes. It failed to respond to Inside Housing’s inquiries but reportedly had more than 17,000 people on its waiting list earlier this year. Council reports said the homes would be ‘costly to maintain’ and that the job to identify homes ‘is now underway as it will save a lot of money in debt repayment costs if tower blocks are identified for demolition by September’.

A paper presented to Eastbourne Council, which is demolishing a number of retirement blocks, added, ‘further demolitions and disposals of retirement courts will be necessary to allow the council to develop a viable HRA business plan’.

Ian Fitzpatrick, senior head of community at Eastbourne Council, said: ‘This process is all about good asset management over the long term.’

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In a separate article from the same edition it was also noted that:

Factsheets have popped through their letterboxes telling them their homes will cost too much to maintain, are in unpopular areas or, perhaps, that the design of their estates of high-rises mean they are crime magnets. The message is clear. As one leaflet prepared for residents in Birmingham puts it: ‘We have identified that one or more of these factors affect your tower block and the best option would appear to be demolition.’

It is not a coincidence that so many of these letters have been arriving within weeks of each other in various towns and cities. The plans for demolitions - more than 2,000 are anticipated in Birmingham and Nottingham alone - are, of course, based on detailed surveys on the viability of stock over the next 30 years. There has, however, been a strong financial imperative for councils to carry out the work. As we reveal on page 1, if councils have firm plans in place for demolition before 2017, the doomed homes will be excluded from housing revenue account calculations. Put simply, fewer homes means less debt for many authorities.

The big question is would these homes have been demolished by 2017 anyway? In some cases certainly. In others it is less clear. David Hall, director of consultancy Sector, who has worked with some authorities on their plans sums up the thought process. He says a number of councils have gone for demolitions ‘where it has been at the back of their mind to do something at some stage and they are bringing it forward to improve the position of their settlement’.

Because the process has been completed so quickly it is hard to tell how controversial the plans will prove in the long term. Heritage group SAVE said it thought the plans ‘seemed crazy’ because of the length of many council housing waiting lists. So there could be national opposition on top of local fights where residents who voted against proposals find their homes are for the chop.

Councils will argue more favourable HRA settlements will enable them to build better homes for the future. But there is no getting away from the strange fact that a reform designed to free councils to build more homes is going to start with a wrecking ball.

Last year Liverpool’s leader claimed that renovating a house in the Welsh Streets district of the city would cost £150,000. When pressed the council admitted the figure ‘was not based on an actual fully costed specification of any one individual property’. In other words, ‘we made it up’. In 2005 a house in the area was refurbished on Trevor McDonald’s Tonight programme for just £32,000.

Similarly, in a furious response to a call from the housing minister to consider refurbishment of the same neighbourhood, Liverpool housing chief Elaine Stuart claimed that demolition had overwhelming support (Inside Housing, 7 January). The planning file tells a different story - the responses in the consultation report show 170 in favour of demolition and 435 against.

Ms Stuart also attacked ‘London-based lobby groups’, such as SAVE, for interfering - choosing to ignore the fact that SAVE was approached for help by local groups, which were sick of being ignored. The Welsh Streets Home Group has seven years of minutes from residents meetings, together with surveys, petitions, buyers registers, and hundreds of letters from local people. Their views have been consistently disregarded.

The question now is whether Liverpool Council will have the courage to abandon demolition and begin a controlled release of condemned properties to those people queuing up to take them on. The financial incentives are there - apart from a potential £20 million from sales (in Welsh Streets alone), the new homes bonus can now be claimed on reinhabited properties, and the Homes and Communitites Agency has a £100 million renovation fund. Pathfinder is dead; it’s time to bury the wrecking ball too.

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So for short-term financial gain and possible long term profits from external developers and their agents it seem that those allegedly elected to act in the public interest are neglecting people's immediate housing needs. The fact that thousands are homeless and more are inadequately housed is not an issue while there is money to be saved or made. This muddled thinking is typical of a system based on money and profit and only serves to underline the need to get rid of it and replace it with one based on satisfying basic human needs such as housing.

SussexSocialist