Paradise lost, or my childhood on a pre-Thatcher council estate

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/17/my-idyllic-council-estate-childhood

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The furore over the Tories’ promise to let housing association tenants buy their homes has set me thinking about my own childhood – a happy one spent on a large council estate in Newport in south Wales. Back in the mid-1960s, more than 65% of the population in the town was housed in council-owned properties, one of the highest percentages in the country. The house was warm (well warmish – we got central heating in about 1970), well-built and well-maintained; the estate, which would these days be labelled “sink”, was stable and generally content (almost everyone had a decent job in the local steelworks, which helped); the large greens in front of each block were communal, well tended and great for games of football, rugby and cricket, often involving 20 children or more. The smell of new-mown grass after the council gardeners had come round to mow the lawns lives with me still. Looking back, it seems idyllic.

Related: Conservative manifesto to offer 1.3m families right to buy housing association homes

The problems only began when the houses began to be sold off under Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s. Some of the new buyers had the money to maintain their properties; others didn’t. The big collective greens were enclosed, so each house could have a large front garden, in which they would keep motorbikes, cars, caravans and other bric-a-brac. Bang went the collective, unifying games of football. Woodland in which children used to roam was enclosed and given to a new hotel. An adjacent two-lane road was extended and speeded up, taking more of the communal land. This was a now a place for commerce rather than children, profit not people.

Worst of all was what happened to the people who couldn’t afford to take up the incentives to buy, or didn’t want the hassles of home ownership. They ceased to live in council housing. They suddenly found they were living in social housing – we should ban that wretched term – and stigmatised as a result. Having once been proud members of a collective – we really were all in this together – they were now in a problem minority.

When I wrote a piece about the Heygate estate in south London a few years back, dealing with the local Labour (!) council’s policy of clearing the estate of poor working-class tenants to create an area fit for wealthy yuppies to live in, what struck me most when I spoke to the few remaining tenants who were holding out against the social cleansers was that the estate had worked when everyone was a council tenant. It started to fall apart and become synonymous with drugs and crime when lots of tenants bought and a proportion of the properties were designated for social housing. The latter group – seen and treated as a problem – became a disruptive force. An estate can function when a few per cent of the residents have endemic problems, but not when all those problem families are concentrated in one area. The balance gets out of kilter; the societal cement starts to break up.

In 1979, before Mrs Thatcher wrought her destructive magic, more than 40% of people in the UK lived in council housing; the figure is now just 12%, with another 6% renting from housing associations. In 1980 12% of people rented from private landlords; now the figure is 18% and rising. Most devastatingly, it is estimated that a third of former council houses are now owned by buy-to-let landlords. What used to be the bedrock of the housing stock for the least well-off part of the population has become part of the UK’s insane rentier economy.

One other damning statistic: one in three working households in social housing are on housing benefit, and one in eight working people renting privately are also on housing benefit. What has essentially happened with the destruction of council housing offered on secure tenancies at affordable rents is that taxpayers are now lining the pockets of buy-to-let landlords. Thank you, Mrs Thatcher.

Incredibly, instead of promising a huge new housebuilding programme to house the estimated four million people on council and housing association waiting lists, and to restore council housing and destigmatise social housing, the Tories want to repeat the mistakes of the 1980s. They have made the destruction of housing associations, the abolition of the collective ideal, a touchstone policy. Labour should reply in kind. What, they should ask, is so wonderful about a property-owning democracy that freezes out a large swath of the population and forces up rents to such a level that they become unaffordable for many? We are handing over vast sums of cash to private landlords, and producing an economy that depends on ever-spiralling house prices. Wasn’t that what led to the crash of 2007-8?

There is nothing wrong with council housing – repeat that ad nauseam to counter everything you’ve heard since the destructive days of the Thatcher government – and with housing associations having an inalienable stock of housing that they offer as secure, long-term tenancies to people in housing need. Labour should boldly stand up for a property-renting democracy. They should also commit to building at least 250,000 homes a year – an increase in supply which, if sustained, will force rents and house prices down and create a more stable society and economy. The Tories, with their electoral bribe, have raised the stakes in this election. Now Labour have to expose their short-termism, their social vandalism, their charlatanism.