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| Undermining housing associations is the next big Tory vote-winner | Undermining housing associations is the next big Tory vote-winner |
| (about 2 hours later) | |
| As an exam question would put it: David Cameron and Margaret Thatcher – compare and contrast. She wanted to go “on and on”; he thinks two prime ministerial terms – or thereabouts – will do. Triumphant populism came to her as a matter of instinct; he and his allies still cannot bond with the all-important lower working-class C2s, nor articulate a vision of the Britain the Tories now want to create. Inevitably, those failures haunt them: whereas Thatcher entered the 1983 and 1987 elections with a clear sense of her mission, Cameron has been fretting about a pitch to the electorate that earlier this month he reportedly rejected, wanting something “crisper” and “more political”. | |
| Modern Conservatives’ Thatcher-envy has long been focused on one iconic measure in particular: the right to buy, which – at no small social cost – turned council tenants into citizens of the property-owning democracy, and sealed the Tories’ electoral deal with a whole swath of the public. Three years ago, in the manner of a revived 80s pop hit, the policy was dusted down by the Tories and remixed, via increases in the discounts offered to prospective buyers. Legislation in progress shortens the length of residence required to qualify, from five to three years. George Osborne’s help to buy scheme reflects much the same thinking. | |
| But evidently none of this chimes well enough with the parts of the electorate the Tories have to reach. So, with their minds focused on the election, senior Conservatives – most notably Iain Duncan Smith – earlier this year began to float the idea of a dramatic extension of RTB into a part of the housing economy hitherto shielded from it: the UK’s 1,700 housing associations – to quote the Daily Mail, “nonprofit-making private bodies that provide low-cost social housing”. | But evidently none of this chimes well enough with the parts of the electorate the Tories have to reach. So, with their minds focused on the election, senior Conservatives – most notably Iain Duncan Smith – earlier this year began to float the idea of a dramatic extension of RTB into a part of the housing economy hitherto shielded from it: the UK’s 1,700 housing associations – to quote the Daily Mail, “nonprofit-making private bodies that provide low-cost social housing”. |
| Related: No exit: Britain’s social housing trap | Polly Toynbee | |
| While reading what follows, please bear in mind the UK’s chronic housing crisis, the habitual Tory tendency to moan about the clunking fist of the state, and the fact that housing associations might be the big society incarnate. In February, Duncan Smith was said to be pushing the idea that in return for tenants holding down a job for at least a year, the government could force councils and housing associations to give them – give them– a 60% stake in their homes. David Orr, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, cheered that proposal as follows: “Of all the daft ideas I’ve heard in a career in housing, this is the daftest.” | While reading what follows, please bear in mind the UK’s chronic housing crisis, the habitual Tory tendency to moan about the clunking fist of the state, and the fact that housing associations might be the big society incarnate. In February, Duncan Smith was said to be pushing the idea that in return for tenants holding down a job for at least a year, the government could force councils and housing associations to give them – give them– a 60% stake in their homes. David Orr, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, cheered that proposal as follows: “Of all the daft ideas I’ve heard in a career in housing, this is the daftest.” |
| It was binned – for the time being, at least – whereupon Tory minds began to focus on a related wheeze. Thanks to the John Major government, some housing association tenants have been able to buy their homes under a strictly circumscribed scheme called right to acquire, which offers tenants very modest discounts, and applies only to homes built or acquired after 1997. The new plan, by contrast, is to make all 2.5m housing association homes eligible for sale at increased discounts (30% has been suggested by Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice), which will apparently be funded by the state. In vain, housing campaigners have pointed out that Britain suffers from a crisis of supply, rather than ownership. But it now looks like a racing certainty that this stupid, cynical plan – now loudly supported by the venerable Boris, among others – will be included in the Tory manifesto. | |
| According to a report in the Sunday Times, Tory policymakers think housing associations “will be able to use the funds from the sale of the houses to build more homes” – but even so, if they got their way, millions of pounds of public money would be spent on a policy that, even in the most optimistic scenario, would result in the stock of social-rented housing staying much the same as it is now. And in fact, the most optimistic scenario would fail to materialise. | According to a report in the Sunday Times, Tory policymakers think housing associations “will be able to use the funds from the sale of the houses to build more homes” – but even so, if they got their way, millions of pounds of public money would be spent on a policy that, even in the most optimistic scenario, would result in the stock of social-rented housing staying much the same as it is now. And in fact, the most optimistic scenario would fail to materialise. |
| Inevitably, there would be a lag between homes being sold and replacements being built – and besides, many people involved in housing associations have no faith that Tory hype would be fulfilled (ministers guaranteed one-for-one replacements for council houses sold off with increased discounts as of 2012; 26,000 homes have been sold since then but just 2,712 have been built). | Inevitably, there would be a lag between homes being sold and replacements being built – and besides, many people involved in housing associations have no faith that Tory hype would be fulfilled (ministers guaranteed one-for-one replacements for council houses sold off with increased discounts as of 2012; 26,000 homes have been sold since then but just 2,712 have been built). |
| And this is only the half of it. Suddenly, housing associations would have no real control over their asset bases and projections of their future revenue. Business plans would go out of the window and they would be less able to borrow money to finance building new homes. | |
| Pretty much as soon as the coalition came into office, 60% of funding for new social housing was cut. Ever since, housing associations have been hit by policies – not least the bedroom tax – that have made their day-to-day operations more precarious, and cuts to benefits that have hugely increased rent arrears. And now this, with its barmy logic. If housing associations are to be forced to sell, why not big private landlords? For all their touchy-feely affectations, Tories understand the latter but still seem baffled by the former. Thatcherites then, Thatcherites now. | Pretty much as soon as the coalition came into office, 60% of funding for new social housing was cut. Ever since, housing associations have been hit by policies – not least the bedroom tax – that have made their day-to-day operations more precarious, and cuts to benefits that have hugely increased rent arrears. And now this, with its barmy logic. If housing associations are to be forced to sell, why not big private landlords? For all their touchy-feely affectations, Tories understand the latter but still seem baffled by the former. Thatcherites then, Thatcherites now. |
| Thirty-five years after RTB we all know what happened to council housing. Sooner or later, the people who bought their homes sold up, and buy-to-let profiteers entered the picture. According to recent research by the Daily Mirror, a third of homes sold under RTB are now owned by landlords, whose rents tower over those charged for social housing and drain away housing benefit. In Scotland they have done away with the policy for that precise reason. | Thirty-five years after RTB we all know what happened to council housing. Sooner or later, the people who bought their homes sold up, and buy-to-let profiteers entered the picture. According to recent research by the Daily Mirror, a third of homes sold under RTB are now owned by landlords, whose rents tower over those charged for social housing and drain away housing benefit. In Scotland they have done away with the policy for that precise reason. |
| Six years ago the Guardian sent me to the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, to investigate RTB’s grim legacy. There, I met a woman called Rita Giles, who spoke of her memories of her street before and after RTB. | |
| “The people who bought the properties don’t live in them any more,” she said. “A lot of them go and live abroad … Now, you might have two or three families in one three-bedroom flat. I’ve seen that happen on our estate … The problem is, any sense of community is utterly eroded … People still speak to me: they’ll say good morning and I’ll say good morning back, because it’s in my nature to do so. But I couldn’t tell you who they are, because with 95% of them it’s the only time I’ve seen them and I might not ever see them again. They just disappear.” | |
| Such is the work of a party that pays lip service to the idea of community but often seems to have no real sense of it, instead pushing individualism-gone-mad in pursuit of a popularity that seems to elude it whatever it does. On this evidence, more than ever, that is exactly the fate the Tories deserve. | Such is the work of a party that pays lip service to the idea of community but often seems to have no real sense of it, instead pushing individualism-gone-mad in pursuit of a popularity that seems to elude it whatever it does. On this evidence, more than ever, that is exactly the fate the Tories deserve. |