Housing

Football versus fat-cat developers

A dispute between Dulwich Hamlet Football Club and the owners of their stadium in south London sharply escalated in the week beginning 5 March. Property developer Meadow Residential has evicted the club from their Champion Hill ground. A subsidiary of the company also wrote claiming to have trademarked “Dulwich Hamlet”, demanding the club no longer use the name. Five years ago, US property developers Meadow Residential bought the Champion Hill ground for £5.6 million. They promised that their plans to redevelop the land would include a decent provision of social housing, as well as...

HDV: death of a sell-off

The resignation of Claire Kober, the Blairite leader of Haringey Council, has left the Haringey Development Vehicle, the scheme her leadership had championed, in tatters. It was a victory for the Stop HDV campaign and the Labour activists who had systematically worked to select candidates for the May council election who opposed the sell-off of £2 billion of public land, the destruction of social housing, and a partnership with the blacklisting giant Lendlease. The intervention of Labour’s National Executive on this issue has led to thousands of column inches and multiple TV appearances for...

Save our homes!

In Leeds, an entire working class community are threatened with their homes being demolished and replaced by homes they can’t afford. The Wordsworth and Sugar Hill Estates on Oulton at the edge of Leeds are made up of seventy ex-National Coal Board houses. After the privatisation of the coal industry these houses were handed over to the Pemberstone Group. They are seeking planning permission to evict the tenants, knock down the housing and replace it with expensive commuter properties for sale. Only 15% of which would be so called “affordable” homes. This will mean the loss of much needed...

NEC intervenes on HDV

In a motion moved by Jim Kennedy from Unite, the Labour NEC has called on Haringey Council to reconsider the Haringey Development Vehicle, a plan to sell off £2bn of public land and form a private partnership with blacklist developer Lendlease to build 6,400 homes. The intervention of the NEC has been deeply controversial on the right of the party, who have condemned intervention from, as one Haringey Cabinet member put it, “the politburo” into the affairs of the local council. The move is unusual, but so are the circumstances of the council’s plan. There are currently 22 sitting councillors...

Tax the rich to build social housing

Homelessness is on the rise in the UK. By end of 2016, the official underestimate was 4,134 people sleeping rough on the streets of the UK. The figure has doubled since 2010 and is a 16% increase on 2015. The housing campaign Shelter estimates 300,000 people sleeping rough or in temporary or overcrowded accommodation, a 13,000 increase on 2016. Further tens of thousands are sofa surfing or staying with friends in tense conditions. By the end of 2017, 79,190 households were in temporary accommodation, a 17% increase on 2015, and a 59% increase on 2010. Since 2010 the number of government-funded...

Locking horns with the Tory government

Rosalind Robson begins a two-part article on the 1972 struggle over council house rents in the Derbyshire town of Clay Cross. Clay Cross Labour council’s defiance in the face of a Tory government which wanted to increase council house rents, and the council’s determination to keep rents low, is a landmark event in British labour movement history and deserves to be better known. In that struggle, one set of councillors was dismissed and surcharged, as a Tory-appointed Housing Commissioner, sent to collect the higher rents. Because the Labour Party in Clay Cross was politically prepared and had...

Homelessness continues to rise

Over the Christmas period the issue of homelessness hit the news, with examples such as Euston train station being opened up to serve Christmas dinner to 200 homeless people. But with housing charity Shelter estimating that 307,000 people are homeless, it is not just an issue at Christmas. London remains the city with the highest rate of homelessness. But while London’s figures have remained relatively stable, other cities have seen large year on year increases in homelessness. In Manchester, one in 154 people are homeless (compared with one in 266 in 2016); in Birmingham one in 88 (119 in...

Landlords profit from right to buy

Four in ten former council homes bought under the Right to Buy scheme are now owned by private landlords. The data, obtained by industry magazine Inside Housing from 111 local authorities using a Freedom of Information request, shows how Thatcher's scheme has decimated social housing stock. In the councils surveyed, a total of 180,260 leasehold properties had been sold under the Right to Buy since 1980. Of these, 72,454 are now registered with an "away address", meaning they are not occupied by the owner. The figure varied amongst local authorities, but was as high as 70.9% of former right-to...

Reverse the inequality spiral!

The share prices of big companies (the FTSE 100) continue to rise. Top bosses' pay dropped a bit between 2015 and 2016, but is on a long-term trend to rise faster than workers' wages, and stood at £3.45 million in 2016 (median pay for FTSE 100 CEOs). The average profit rate of UK firms (outside finance and outside the North Sea oilfields) recovered entirely a long time ago from its dip in 2008-9, and is now around 13%, compared to 8% in 2001. While the rich rejoice, the big majority are pushed back. Average earnings are no higher in real terms than they were in February 2006, despite overall...

The housing crisis and fighting back

Britain has a housing crisis. According to Shelter more than 300,000 people — the equivalent to one in every 200 — are homeless or living in inadequate homes. According to official figures 1.3 million people are on a local authority waiting list for housing. By 2020, 25% of people will be renters, rather than home owners. Londoners now spend 40% of their income on rent, and increasing. In 2016, 100 people a day were evicted from their rented homes, partly as a consequence of private-rented tenancies being made less secure. According to the government 28% of these rented homes can be considered...

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