Housing in Crisis: What Future for the Twenty-first Century? – write-up by CM of discussion on 6th September 2007, after SE’s introduction.

CM: Thank you SE for history and background, now maybe others can discuss the housing problems affecting people now, including in Exeter area.

DP: Young people in their late teens who are being badly treated at home can’t get out and end up crashing on friends’ floors. One such I know went to the bank for a loan for a deposit on a rented place and was turned down because he’s only been working for six months. Also apprenticeship wages can be less than the minimum wage since they’re supposedly getting training. The right to rent is an issue, never mind the right to buy. In Exeter, in 1883-4 the rate for a room was £25. The 1977 Rent Act provided a framework for private sector rents and tenancies, security of tenure, a tenant could take a landlord to a tribunal to get a fair rent, and a group of us did this and got the £25 each down to £10. The 1988 Housing Act privatised Council Housing, and Labour authorities were privatising, so there was less social housing. Then it was £52 p.w. for a flat, half wre in the private sector. Council rents are comparatively low, Housing Associations part way between. This is a big issue for young low-paid working class people. It affects other social problems like family breakdown.

SE: The treatment of people on low pay is an issue. Those in work but on low incomes are treted worse than the unemployed, and have all sorts of problems. There’s a poverty trap, and they’re not treated as a priority.

DP: Their rent can be higher than their income.

GB: On owner occupation, the US crisis is a key issue, due to loans to those who can’t pay back, ‘sub-prime loans’. With less security the interest is higher and this led to a financial crisis. Owner occupation today has new problems. people used to be able to borrow up to 2 ½ times their income, now 10 times. There are problems even for those in secure work, such as negative equity, where house values have dropped and someone’s house is worth less than their mortgage. There’s a danger negative equity will return. Now people’s pay may be higher but they have to pay virtually all of it to the Building Society. The crisis has got worse. One problem is with the leftover homes on a former Council estate which has become mainly owner occupied, the Council doesn’t do anything to them. There was a postwar boom and a rush to build, many were pretty poor, even terrible like Ronan Point which collapsed in 1968, fortunately in the day time so few casualties. That kind of building was stopped. The best Council housing was OK, not beautiful but comforable. There’s just one tower block in Exeter. With tower blocks there’s a problem keeping an eye on children playing, not so much the tower block itself but the social problems that goes with that. There’s also a problem of rigidity of supply: can’t build them quickly and can’t move empty houses to where there’s need. Now new homes are needed for individuals and couples when it used to be for families. There are a lot of difficulties linked to neo-liberal policies.

CM: There are problems even for potential owner occupiers who do have good incomes. There is the myth that there is a shortage of land for housing in this country. The problem is that so much land is still owned by a few aristocratic landowners, who trickle it only the market when they get a tip off that is could be built on (Kevin Cahill, Who Owns Britain?). Similarly for construction companies who hoard land: land banks, again sucking up to Council Officers and Members to find out planning decisions that are coming up, buy up agricultural land at £3000 an acre and sell it for development at £1 million per acre. Another problem is that the myth of shortage has led to a policy to build at higher density, so new homes will have scarcely any garden. Also developers are buying up big houses with large gardens, demolishing the house and building four to six, often executive five-bedroom places, not ‘affordable’ homes. In Dawlish and many other towns in Devon, every patch of land is snapped up for infilling, and green spaces are being lost. My MP, Younger-Ross expresses concern. Another issue is on climate change, where the technology exists and is well-understood for building to high ecological standards, even carbon neutral, which is normal in Germany and Scandinavia. There was a plan to make such standards compulsory, enforceable by local authorities, but after lobbying from developers such standards are merely ‘encouraged’.

GB: Ken Livingstone is now saying ‘cram them in’, never mind gardens. More people want to live in London, when at one time they were being moved out to the suburbs. On the sub-prime loans, the knock-on effect is eviction, no other options.

CM: There is a video ‘The End of Suburbia’ about American suburbs not being sustainable due to the approach of Peak Oil (when the best of the oil has been exploited, after which it gets expensive, with major effects on the economy). Americans are wedded to their cars, it is electoral disaster for a politician to propose measures to tackle this. US suburbs depend on the car, people work elsewhere and there’s no public transport.

DP: There’s a road in Exeter – Riffard Road – which used to be 100% Council housing, now mostly private. Houses are being converted into flats. Where it used to be £50 p.w. for a 4-bed house, flats are £100 p.w., so private rental income is £4-500 p.w.

TR: In an ideal world housing would be integrated with self-sufficiency. Houses would be dotted about in the countryside. People should only have gardens if they use them to grow food, and should be assessed on if they are able to do that. maybe they’d get an allotment first to demonstrate that.

CM: Maybe shared gardens would be good – cluster of houses together. Hamlets as in Anglo-Saxon times.

GB: Some people don’t have any options: it’s raise 2 children in B&B or take this place, and they take it. Council building is the way forward. Where does the money come from is the questions that’s asked, but that should be set aside, and consider what we want.

TR: The land should be shared equally.

CM: There’s about the same number of acres of land as people, so an acre each.

GB: Most people are urban. Worldwide that’s now true, just over half. Suburban dwellers are urban too. At the bottom of the market people are scrambling for what’s there. They need more homes where they are.

BC: It shouldn’t be about owner occupation, there should be common ownership.

TR: It’s wrong that the elderly hang on to their big houses, with big gardens they can’t manage and have to have someone to do it for them. Perhaps several elderly people could move in together.

SE: There’s actually plenty of living space even in urban areas, and there should be campaigning about that.

BC: There are two solutions, one the ideal and the other transitional, as socialists we should recognise both. Social ownership is ideal, but how do we get from here to there?

SE: In Burnt House Lane they have residents committee meetings, and that’s a way for people to get their concerns heard.

DP: We need socialist solutions, but the reality is that the financial sector would be affected if there were a massive house building programme. Presumably house prices would drop. In Monbiot’s Heat, he says that zero carbon housing costs a bit more, and is paid for in reduced fuel bills after ten years. But if the development is by landowners for rental, that’s not in their interest, so it would require enforceable planning/building regulations.

GB: We need residents associations with real powers so ordinary people have more control over their lives. I worry about authoritarian solutions. It’s difficult to crack problems with private ownership. In other European countries more people are content to rent and it’s not thought inferior.

TB: There are owner occupiers who can’t afford any furniture or heating.

DP: Singles aged 30s to 40s on reasonable incomes give most of it to landlords, Before 1988 Housing Act there was security. Then there were Shorthold Tenancies and in six months the landlord could get you out. There was housing benefit cut-off point, then the rest out of your pocket. Now the private sector has got astronomical and it’s forced people into owner occupation.

SE: People on the streets are those with mental illness, ex-military, real casualties of society. There’s also ‘sofa surfing’, especially women. There are under 40 homeless according to Exeter City Council, which has to be wrong. There are hidden homeless, people who don’t approach the Council.

DP: Sleeping rough and homeless are two categories.

SE: According to Shelter there are 160 thousand empty properties. There’s been a clamp down on squatting.

GB: Lack of a movement a there once was on squatting. The BNP tell people about the immigarnts. Brown is worried about them using that and taking safe Labour seats. It’s getting one group of victims to blame another.

DP: There’s a tiny handful of refugees in Exeter.

People signed a card for Bill, wishing him to get well.

It was agreed to close the Exeter Socialist Alliance bank account, and put the balance into the Exeter Socialists account as no one beside us is any longer a member of the ESA.

Topics for future meetings were agreed up to December.

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