Sir Menzies Campbell demands ‘revolution’ in social housing
Posted on Thursday 14 June, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell is calling for ‘a revolution’. He’s only talking about social housing, in the context of a demand for 100,000 low-cost homes to be built per year. But then, if anything in Britain today needs a revolution, housing must come near the top of the list.
Last time I saw any stats – and this figure is probably a few years out of date and things may have changed a little – the number of housing starts in Britain was the lowest since 1924.
That was around half the figure for France, a country with a similar population. Yet the UK’s housing stock is the oldest in Europe, with a quarter of dwellings built before world war one. At the current rate of replacement, Britain’s housing stock will need to last 5,600 years – longer than the pyramids.
According to Sir Ming, there are currently 130,000 children living in unsuitable temporary accommodation and one million people dwelling in overcrowded conditions.
New Labour is pledging that 30,000 new homes will be built in 2008 and 200,000 a year by 2016. Nevertheless, the Lib-Dems are right to inject a notion of urgency into the debate.
The democratic left can and should go further, pointing to the deleterious effect that the free market has had in generating a housing crisis across the UK, and particularly in the south east. Buy-to-let speculation and tax breaks for second homes are issues that need to be tackled.
Half a dozen leading building firms form a classic oligopoly, which naturally seeks to keep prices high and is probably guilty of restricting supply in order to maximise profit.
We should also be promoting the so-called ‘fourth option’ for council housing, namely direct investment to fund improvements as an alternative to privatisation.
What is more, construction could be made central to a national job creation strategy. Building a house creates two jobs in building, one job in manufacturing and one job in furnishing. Schools and hospitals need renewal too.
Some commentators have predicted recently that by 2026, the price of an average house will be ten times the price of an average salary. That cannot be sustainable.
Housing is yet another example of the need for a progressive government to think outside the free market box.
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5 Responses to “Sir Menzies Campbell demands ‘revolution’ in social housing”
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There’s still need for a lot of slum clearance, as there’s a lot of terrible housing left in inner cities- much of it currrently let to students! I think there’s room for some innovative public architecture and housing projects to counter the stultifying drabness of most private housing schemes.
Igor, I would recommend reading some Jane Jacobs and giving “slum clearance” and “housing projects” some very careful consideration. Certainly in America and France, the social consequences of those efforts for the residents themselves have been disastrous, and from Jacobs I’m inclined to think the principle of destroying and rebuilding a neighborhood all at once is fundamentally flawed, not just the execution in high Le Corbusier style.
That said, I think there’s still plenty of room (certainly there is here in Seattle) for innovative public architecture in infill schemes.
If I can jst bring the discussion down to a personal level, all these bloody flat conversions have forced the price of entire houses sky-high. I can’t imagine how this housing crisis will be solved. There doesn’t seem to be any political will to solve it.
I agree to some extent Clayton, but in many cities decent Victorian and Edwardian town housing has been knocked down and replaced while back-to-backs and decrepit hovels remain in other areas. I think some of the grander scale modern projects were executed poorly and too cheaply, but I still think there’s room for genuine innovation in slum areas and on brownfield sites. Plus there should be encouragement for renovating and repairing older houses that are potentially of good quality and are currently underused.
I used to have mates who lived in some of the shittest, semi derelict low rises in Britain…and inside they were absolutely fine, if a little pokey; warm, dry, big windows, decent kitchen and bathroom, not that you’d want to spend your dotage in one.
The real problem was, I think, was the inability to get rid of any bawling, scabby tramps that moved in. Porter them, hand genuine control of the block to resident’s councils and provide mechanisms for quickly ousting gobshites and they’d be thoroughly livable, certainly a vast improvement on most rented accommodation.