“KILL THE HOUSING BILL” Campaign

Today’s protest outside the Houses of Parliament against the Housing and Planning Bill 2015

This Bill will continue to accelerate the loss of Council Homes as it compels Local Councils to sell off Council Homes AND Housing Association Homes – “Security of Tenure” – is set to become a thing of the past if this Bill comes into Law.

Kill the Housing Bill – Secure Homes for All

https://www.rt.com/uk/327979-housing-bill-protest-london/

Instead what we need to do is to remove the Right to Buy and instead offer something like ‘Help to Buy’ for social housing tenants (and for all others on low to middle incomes) who want to buy their own home but have been squeezed out of the private property market: Councils could build as a proportion of council homes ‘truly affordable homes’ on newly built part-rent/part-buy developments for this purpose –  freeing up a proportion of wholly rented social housing for more people on the housing list.

Compounded with this is the fact that according to the National Housing Federation the UK is already short of the half a million homes needed to meet our housing needs.  In Lewisham the Local Councillors have said that we need 1700 new homes a year to meet local housing need and keep up with the demand for housing – their pledge of 500 new council homes by 2018 is really not going to “cut the mustard”!  The net effect of the lack of affordable housing is a direct increase in the waiting lists of people on the housing register, which the GLA says there are  “over 350,000 households on housing waiting lists in London.”  All new developments should have a minimum of 50% social rent homes – no negotiation down on this figure and on publicly owned land – this should be 100% social homes – local housing for local people – using Community Right to Build, Housing Co-operatives, offering sites for travellers and Gypsy Travellers.  Where Local Authorities have as part of their area water boundaries – the public areas of these should also be offered at local mooring rates for houseboat households – rather than the astronomical private mooring rates which can amount to £10K plus a year currently being charged.

When we add into the mix the fact that private rents have been spiralling out of control year on year for the past decade – averaging out as a 2.5% increase across the whole of England in the 12 months to June 2015 – and the figure for London was a whopping 3.8% increase (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/hpi/index-of-private-housing-rental-prices/april-to-june-2015-results/index.html) – way above the rate of inflation which for last year was less than 1%! – it’s no wonder we have housing crisis – something that this Bill does not address!

We need some form of rent controls – reducing rent levels down by 5-10% on current figures and then linking rent increases to inflation (with safeguards incase inflation creeps over 3%).

According to Rentals website Rentonomy 90% of central London is now even out of the reach of graduates who are prepared to rent just a room. So, for an average graduate earning £22,400 per year, an unaffordable room costs over £129 a week or £560 per month.  And according to the GLA’s own figures, 59% of the private rented sector is comprised of young adults aged between 16 and 34 (twice as high as the proportion of this age group in London’s overall population (29%)).

2-5 year Fixed – Term Tenancies will replace secure tenancies – leaving tenants vulnerable by having to re-apply to Landlords after the fixed term, and with relatives unable to apply to continue the tenancy if the named person on the tenancy agreement dies or decides to give it up.

Instead this Bill could have looked at the best practice models for renting in some of our European counterpart countries – e.g. Spain, France, Germany etc where the tenancy can roll on indefinitely without fixed term – in France for example the minimum term for an unfurnished property is 3 years.

For other info see:

https://www.facebook.com/events/514234278756465/

https://www.facebook.com/TradeUnionistsForHousing?_rdr=p