Homes or Profit?

The cliche is that Britain has a housing crisis. It doesn’t: rather it has a whole series of different housing crises. In Northern Ireland huge swaths of homeowners remain in negative equity after the credit crunch. In Liverpool the problem isn’t of expensive housing, but of residents in Anfield and Granby fighting to maintain some say in what happens to their neighbourhoods. And in London the problem is that it is now almost impossible for anyone coming to the city to buy here, or increasingly to rent somewhere decent, either.

American fund manager Westbrook, which bought an entire London’s New Era estate and plans to jack up rents sky-high, forcing residents into homelessness. Richard Benyon, the Tory MP whose multimillion-pound family estate partnered on the deal – until public shaming forced him last week to pull out.

The investment firm, Westbrook, headquartered on Madison Avenue, New York, set up in the mid-90s, just as businesses were coming round to the idea that owning their premises was fuddy-duddy and that the future lay in renting. Westbrook has made millions from that fashion – buying, letting and selling trophy-office development in London and around the world. And it’s not been alone: in 2011 Cambridge academics found that 52% of the City’s offices were now owned by foreign investors, up from 8% in 1980. Westbrook invests money from public and private pension funds, endowments, foundations, and financial institutions, mainly in America – and largely in Texas.

By buying New Era, Westbrook has become a giant absentee landlord. No one from that firm will set foot on the Hoxton estate, of course. Indeed, since the Benyons’ exit, tenants report they have not heard a word from the Americans who now own their homes. Instead, it’s been the council who’s conveyed messages back and forth. New Era was built by a charitable trust in the 1930s in order to offer working-class residents affordable private rented accommodation. Even when the blocks were sold this spring, residents say they were assured that the old tenets would apply. Within weeks, new owners told them that rents would rise to market values: spiralling from £600 a month for a two-bed flat to something closer to £2,400. That was meant to happen by summer 2016. After Benyon’s firm pulled out of the deal last week, residents were told that Westbrook would accelerate the process. Westbrook has form in rough treatment of those people who pay it rent. Earlier this year the New York attorney general ordered it and a business partner to make up for thousands of building violations and to pay $1m to tenants, to make up for illegal fees and overcharging.

For the poor of London, the financialisation of property spells homelessness. According to UKIP it's Eastern European plumbers that are causing housing shortage. Not Middle Eastern oil barons or US hedge funds buying London property as an guaranteed investment. Not a whisper from the Tories or Labour when  the 'right kind' of rich foreigners are being explotiative. Why bother with addressing actual problems when you can just pit working class against each other. The profits of the international companies are made by causing suffering to the poor.

From here