Scottish Tenants Organisation
Thursday 12th February 2009
The Times announced on Thursday 30 January 2009, that Gordon Brown had ordered thousands of new council houses. At the same time Nicola Sturgeon was announcing a huge boost to public sector building in Scotland. Gordon Brown said “ Today let me be clear: if local authorities can convince us that they can deliver quickly-and cost-effectively – more of the housing that Britain needs, and if local authorities can build social housing in sustainable communities that meets the aspirations of the British people in the 21st century, then we will be prepared to give them our full backing and put aside anything that stands in their way.
(Gordon Brown, New Local Government Network, 29 January)
This announcement which is a significant change in government policy has to be welcomed, however we have heard similar warm words before with no clear strategy being applied to make the words reality. In other words, can the government be trusted?
Similarly, when Nicola Sturgeon was stating that council house building in Scotland was to be given a massive kick start, it emerged that out of an announcement about government supported house building, more than five thousand had been built by Housing Associations and that around four hundred and eighty had been built by local councils. There seems to me to be a certain disparity there and possibly not a little confusion. In making this announcement was Nicola Sturgeon perhaps getting a bit mixed up between housing built in the public sector through local authorities and those being built in the private sector by Housing Associations? I think a little clarity is called for here as herein lie many of our difficulties, because public housing and social housing are quite distinct.
Social housing blur
We need clarity on this issue if the words are to mean anything in reality. If council house building is to be given a massive boost as announced then we have to stop confusing council housing with housing in the social sector. This is important for a number of reasons. Primarily because lumping all housing not built by private developers under the title of social housing was part of a deliberate attempt by the Thatcher government to blur the differences between the sectors so that people would be more easily fooled into believing that stock transfers were not privatisation. Just as investing in housing through Housing Associations is also being promoted as not being investment in privatisation. If there is to be support for council housing then lets get the language and the definitions right at the start so that everyone understands what is being referred to when discussing housing problems. Lets call public housing, council housing and leave social housing to Registered Social Landlords, i.e. housing associations.
“ affordable housing”
Another example of the importance of the language being abused is on the term “ affordable housing”. Who decides what is affordable? It certainly is not the tenants. This is one more issue that needs clarity through debate. A tenants definition would probably be close to a definition of `rents and services that are calculated to leave those on low incomes with enough money to afford a decent quality of life`. Not the definition which is currently being applied, I think.
I mention these examples to show how language is deliberately used to confuse and obscure what is going on.
And what is going on has led us to the mess we are in and the crisis in housing which Scotland is presently facing. This crisis in housing demands some straight talking.
What about the real crisis in housing
For a start lets stop talking about the crisis in the housing market and lets talk about the crisis in housing. This crisis would be the one which has been in existence for some long time and which refuses to go away even in the so called good times. This is the crisis where forty thousand people are classified as homeless and over one hundred and ninety thousand people are on housing waiting lists. Many more also suffer in silence in overcrowded or unhealthy conditions or struggle to find affordable accommodation on a low wage in a high housing cost area. Many homes are unfit and huge amounts of public housing has been given away at knock down prices while remaining tenants pick up the costs through their rents. Added to this is the fact that thousands of houses that could have been refurbished have been demolished to make way for private housing.
These statistics are a shocking indictment on any government.
According to government figures, 24,744 houses were built in Scotland in 2007. Of these 21,386 were built by private developers. 3,300 by Housing Associations and the public sector built just 28.
How is this meant to solve our crisis in housing? It never has in the past. We have to move away from the idea that everyone wants to be a homeowner. In fact succesive governments seem to believe that everyone needs to be a homeowner . This is one more area which needs clarity and examination. Governments over the years have promoted homeownership as the only game in town. Deregulation of borrowing has allowed the agenda to run full tilt.
Dodgy research and disapearing homeless
Drastic cuts have been made to public investment, then governments tell us that research has shown that most people now want to own their home. What they don`t tell you is that the so-called research was policy driven and designed to meet current market ideologies
An outstanding example of this policy driven research is the model used to calculate housing need in Scotland. The Housing Need and Affordability Model currently in use is based on the assumption that low-cost housing will only be made available to those who absolutely cannot afford anything else. Also those who are deemed to have an income that could support a mortgage do not feature on housing waiting lists. This kind of sleight of hand allows places like Glasgow which has a backlog of 29,000 on the waiting list to turn that figure into just 2,900.
This policy driven deeply flawed research must be ditched in favour of a genuine calculation of housing need if we are to get anywhere near to a proper starting place to address our housing crisis. Council housing must not be seen as housing of last resort. Council housing must be able to be a tenure of choice.
The private market has never delivered secure housing that people can afford and the rush to transfer public housing into the private sector has not added any more housing to the mix.
Privatisation of some of our communities or “ community ownership”
In fact, housing stock transfers have not only resulted in the privatisation of lots of public housing, they have also resulted in the privatisation of some of our communities.
Some of my relatives rent from a Registered Social Landlord.
This landlord runs the local gala days that were traditionally organised by communities themselves. The landlord also runs the Christmas parties as well as the New Year celebrations. The Community Centre is also under the cotrol of the landlord.
The Chairperson of the Board of this landlord addresses friends and neighbours he has lived with for decades as his “customers” in his annual reports to the landlords AGM.
This is what in the twisted language of privatisation is known as “ community ownership”.
Genuine community regeneration? Is it genuine community planning?
Much of the same holds true for community regeneration and community planning.
These are all someone else’s terms coined for someone else’s purposes. The community supposedly referred to by these terms are not part of the planning and decision making processes for so-called community regeneration or for so-called community planning. The planning, the decision making and the implementation of these exercises are all done by those not from the communities being regenerated or having their communities planned. The involvement, if any, of our communities is purely tokenistic. Although the structural and financial contributions that are exacted from communities is quite considerable; regeneration budgets as well as community planning budgets are all set well out of the reach of our communities and any planning is done in advance of the invitations for communities to get involved.
Once the master plan has been constructed communities are then tagged on at the end to give an impression of community involvement; in reality communities are only involved in someone else’s agenda. This is not genuine community regeneration nor is it genuine community planning.
Housing Supply Task Force
A further example is the the work of the Housing Supply Task Force. When this was established the Scottish Tenants Organiation asked if it could have a place on this body. We recieved a short sharp, No! from the Communities Minister.
And if you follow the deliberations of the Task Force you will see that one of their recommendations on dealing with the Government`s Community Engagement strategy is to define this as a barrier to the Government’s housing agenda and to suggest that communiies must be engaged through PR exercises to appraise them of the benefits of giving rein to private developments and intrusions into greenbelt land.
The system from the point of view of communities, just seems to roll over communities with little real regard for what communities want or need.
West Dunbartonshire Council decision process is deplorable
A current example of this way of operating is exemplified by West Dunbartonshire Council and its attempts to ignore what tenants want. This council has had thoroughly bad inspection reports from Communities Scotland, Audit Scotland and now the new Housing Regulator. Their tenant participation practices have been deplorable according to inspection reports, yet despite this and the recent rejections of housing stock transfers across Scotland, the council have asked the permission of Government Ministers to attempt to transfer half of it`s housing stock to the another landlord. Audit Scotland has on two occasions told this council to review its decision on transfer but this has simply been ignored and the area still faces the prospect of losing huge numbers of public housing. How do they get away with this when the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 insists that councils have to involve tenants in their planning and decision making on housing services.
Civil Servants overstep their remit
There is also supposed to be a team of civil servants employed to ensure that councils comply with the 2001 Act. This team is known as the Tenant Participation Development Team based in the Government`s housing division at Victoria Quay. The Team were criticised recently in a consultants report for failing to live up to it`s remit of overseeing the regulatory compliance of councils such as West Dunbartonshire. It will be interesting to see the reaction of Government Ministers to the actions of West Dunbartonshire Council.
I mention all of these matters to show the difficulties facing the tenants movement and communities and the barriers we have to overcome to be properly heard.
One more barrier to being heard is the damage being done to the tenants movement in Scotland by the Scottish Government through it`s attacks on our independence. For the past four years the Government in Scotland has been undermining the independence of the tenants movement through the establishment of Regional Networks of tenants groups. These Networks set up through an artificial process instigated by the previous Government and supported by the present Government are little more than puppet groups, run, coached and managed by civil servants of the Tenant Participation Development Team. These civil servants are present at meetings where tenants are deliberating on housing issues and manage the process of tenants’ responses to Government consultations. Civil servants have no place in the tenants’ movement. We don`t need them to organise or manage anything for us. We are quite capable of managing ourselves.
The process known as National Engagement is a farce and the tenants’ movement needs these civil servants off our backs and out of tenants’ meetings. We want our independence.
Scotland’s for Council Housing
All of these problems are preventing a genuine debate about the issues which really matter to us as tenants.
We have to have a debate on housing issues and we have to have any debate on our own terms and not one dictated by the Government or it`s civil servants.We need to put our own case.
The tenants’ movement is clear on what it wants from housing policies after having debated the subject for many years without the aid of civil servants. We want to make council housing once again the tenure of choice to stand alongside a first class National Health Service, good local schools and other public services we can be proud of. We need council housing to provide an alternative to the instability and insecurity of the market. The Scottish Government proposals on Lead Developers are not acceptable.
Our alternative manifesto for Scottish Housing is:
- Public investment in good quality publicly owned housing available to all who want it.
- An end to stock transfers of any variety and scale
- Council housing debt write-off
- Direct investment in improving existing council houses
- Mass public housebuilding programmes
- The right for tenants to transfer back to council ownership
- An end to the removal of homes from the public and social sectors through right-to-buy.
- Replacement of schemes that subsidise homeownership (and push up house prices) with investment in the public sector.
- Affordable rents that are calculated so as to leave those on low incomes with enough money to afford a decent quality of life
- Controlled private rents with security of tenure, together with policies that reduce dependence on the private rented sector in favour of council housing.
- An end to demolitions that are not supported by tenants and are not part of a programme to provide better housing for the tenants being displaced.
- Proactive planning policies that ensure that public sector housing is available in good central positions and not driven out to perimeter estates.
- The possibility for tenants who want it – to have genuine involvement in running their homes.
- Recognition of the role of genuinely independent tenant and community organisations
I do not think that I need to reiterate here the folly of the housing policies that have caused the present crisis.
I think it is sufficient to say that a change of direction is necessary.
If reports that all political parties in Scotland support the idea of council housing are true, then the Scottish Tenants Organisation is more than willing to engage in a dialogue on how the idea can be brought about.
I would like to thank the Members of the Scottish Parliament present for listening to our case and would like to think there will be the opportunity for ongoing dialogue on all housing issues in the future.
Please let`s have that debate.
John Carracher
The Scottish Tenants Organisation
