Labour has to make some key decisions in 2014 if housing policy is to be a significant asset to our election prospects in 2015.
Labour will fight the next general election on the ‘cost of living’, arguing that most people have not gained from any meagre economic growth under the coalition government. It is clear from Emma Reynolds’ first major speech as shadow housing minister yesterday, that Labour’s housing policy will form a part of this argument.
We will argue that too many people cannot afford to buy their own home so are forced to rent expensive and insecure flats and that we have the policies to fix this.
I say ‘will argue’ because Reynolds is quite clear that the proposals which she outlined are not a ‘silver bullet’ and that Labour is waiting for Michael Lyons’ housing review to come up with a more thorough set of policies.
The ideas that were announced yesterday were interesting but pretty small-scale – things like a ‘guaranteed access to public land to smaller firms and custom builders’ and working ‘with the mortgage lenders to create standardised self- and custom-build mortgages’.
These will not, by themselves, make it easier for young households on middling incomes with no inheritance to buy a house.
In order to come up with a convincing position on housing in 2014 Labour has to answer two fundamental strategic questions: our position on council housing and who is to blame for the current housing crisis.
Many Labour activists find it surprising that building council housing is not a more popular policy. However, the stubborn fact remains that the public continue overwhelming to want to own their own homes and to view council housing as a less preferred tenure.
New Labour’s housing policy was characterised by fevered attempts to propose almost any solution to the housing crisis that did not involve building council flats, for exactly this reason; they were worried about being associated with the stigma that still surrounds council estates.
Will One Nation Labour take a different approach? This is the first major strategic decision that Reynolds will have to make this year.
Second, and just as important, Labour needs to decide where it thinks the blame lies for the ‘housing crisis’. The most obvious candidate, ‘rogue landlords’, are an easy target and one that can capture the popular imagination. Reynolds’ predecessor, Jack Dromey, has already laid much of the groundwork here, with a range of policies to try and curb the worst practices.
However, no one will be convinced that the consequence of Labour drumming out rogue landlords would be affordable housing for all. They are just too small-scale a problem in the scheme of things.
Other potential bogeymen include the planning system, a lack of competition in the building industry, NIMBYs, the tax system, and so on and so on.
None of these are particularly compelling dragons to slay. The contrast with Labour’s energy policy could not be clearer. There the idea of the ‘price freeze’ works for the public because it paints the energy companies as the villain and the Labour party as the hero, standing up for the public.
In 2014 we must decide who or what we blame for the housing crisis and how this translates into policies to fix the crisis.
There are reasons to be positive. The public, especially in London and the south-east, are very concerned about how expensive housing has become and the coalition government will have no record to boast about in 2015. Reynolds has made a good start in what could be a high-profile and significant brief, but the big strategic questions remain.
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Thomas Neumark is a former Labour councillor and blogs at Dream Housing. He tweets @TomNeumark
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Although a Labour voter – I have to say that I have met Kris Hopkins and he is a very nice guy.
“New Labour’s housing policy was characterised by fevered attempts to propose almost any solution to the housing crisis that did not involve building council flats, for exactly this reason; they were worried about being associated with the stigma that still surrounds council estates.”
The “stigma” is an artificial construct, a direct result of “right to buy” and the inevitable result of the residualisation of council housing owing to those who could not afford to buy being left on the least desirable estates in the least desirable properties.
I both lived and worked in and around council housing during the 1970s and it simply wasn’t like that. Yes there were a few estates with a bad repuation but by and large the mix of people living in council accommodation in the East End of London was broad across both working and middle class. There was no stigma, just a difference in incomes and lifestyle between the council residents and the large house owners in Wanstead.
We can return to those days but it will take courage on the part of the Government to break through that stigma, to build sufficient council dwellings once again, and to attain a sufficiently diverse range of residents that the stigma subsides.
This requires firstly abandoning RTB entirely such that none are lost and all thoughts of “Pay to stay” and other ludicrous policies dreamt up by the right. A mix of incomes across council housing is a good thing, not a bad thing to be exploited.
There are a lot more questions than these, the powers of landlords, the way in which you could get more housing in areas of need, and whether houses are overvalued and what to do about it are all more important. And a lot more difficult.
The comments from ‘single aspect’ are absolutely correct about New Labour who did not have an adequate housing policy. Thatcher had effectively killed off the large housing programmes and we are now paying the price. The housing scandal is a time bomb waiting to go off. Our cities now have inflated and excessive rents and very limited affordable housing. The mixed Council estates of the 1940’s, 50’s,60’s and 70’s were a success because they were mixed. I was a Councillor in Ealing in the 70’s and proud of the estates we built which gave people decent housing and a start in life. Housing went off the agenda nationally after Thatcher and could have been back on in the Blair era, I don’t mean sink estates but mixed estates and by not tackling that then we have an enormous problem and a housing market that is out of control. God knows what our spokesperson will come up with but being wishy washy will not be the answer. Perhaps if the upper echelons of the political class had personal experience in life of housing problems themselves we might not be in this mess. I am ashamed that in this day and age that we have such a problem.
To avoid any misunderstanding the first paragraph in my comment is in quotation marks and is taken from the article above. My comment is a response to those New Labour ideas.
Any future Housing Tzar/ina should look at the viability of: (1) Allowing prospective [maybe unemployed] home-owners and tenants to have a hand/lend a hand in building their own houses [and future for their families]. Cutbacks on Contractor’s rapacious profits/labour costs would be needed as the labour required would be sourced from the future home-owner/tenant him or herself. The future homeowner/tenant would be employed as his or her own self-build boss [a 6 week course could be offered teaching the basics for:brickies, plasterers,carpentry/joiners, sparkies’, plumbers and other ancillary job functions, supervised by college-trained staff. This would ‘kill’ two birds with one stone – unemployment and housing ministers would have to work harder though as (2) The main greed-motivated Home Builders would be fired, leaving a site agents management role vacant which can easily be sorted out — with a bit of imagination.
Work would be ‘fun’ for a change – nothing better than building your own home for your family — its an inbuilt gene-thing dating back to Stone Ages. The currentl unemployed/no house citizen [of any age] now has work, respectability and confidence that s/he is working towards an achievable goal. Any future rents/mortgage payments would be 55% lower than current rents/mortgage repayments as [0%] no-interest loan on building materials.
Cutting out the Sir Greedalot and other BIG building Barons may cause some squealing on the Stock markets for an hour or two, but any self-respecting Housing and/or DWP Minister would take this in his [or HER] stride knowing that the end result justify the means. And no pain.