“IDEALLY it would suit someone less than 5’4 tall and with no history of claustrophobia,” is the description for a letting advertisement found on Gumtree for £40 per week. Despite the fact that “you cannot stand in the room,” it comes with freshly washed bedding, parquet flooring and enough space for a few items of clothing. Whether this was someone’s satirical sense of humour at play or if they were genuinely trying to score an extra forty quid per week for a short person to live in their ceiling, it does well in summing up the housing situation in London.
If you are one in four young adults moving back home, struggling to save money for your very own house, or on the waiting list for social housing – things aren’t going to be getting any easier for you in England’s capital. Alongside the typical trend of converting houses into multiple flats and flats into roomshares, developers are now having a feeding frenzy on the selling off of council houses.
Robert Naylor, from the Camden Federation of Private Tenants, (CFPT), believes that the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme introduced by Margaret Thatcher over 30 years ago, is adding to the disproportionate figure of state and privately owned properties in London. He proposes that promoting home ownership is the government’s artificial intervention in the market that’s moving people away from renting, which ultimately reduces the number of council properties being built. Currently a third of properties are ending up in the hands of private landlords where they don’t want to live in them and are essentially being used as a public asset.
“The problem is now the council is losing a property a week through ‘Right to Buy’, those properties aren’t being replaced. When it’s gone it’s gone forever. The national statistics show that we need more social housing, you can see that thousands of houses are lost through right to buy due to the government’s intervention in the housing market that encourages people to own,” he said.
“A major factor that led to the economic crisis in America”
“For what we would argue, there needs to be a culture shift in terms of housing, we need to have a better understanding that opposes to this continuous obsession in owning properties. The government is happy to intervene to provide resources at certain times, yet the idea of a free market is that you don’t intervene. This leads to things like the sub-prime market where people can’t afford mortgages and default on them, a major factor that led to the economic crisis in America,” he added.
Camden Housing Action Group is a group of angry local residents who have been occupying council properties in the area to protest against its selling off to private developers. The Camden Council had previously promised that only non-residential properties would be sold to fund new housing projects, yet without any public announcement they offered up for auction various properties on Southampton road.
Spokesperson from the Camden Housing Action Group, Janis Ware, stated that the council shouldn’t be breaking their election manifesto by selling off residential properties. Protesters from the group have been arrested on site under the law on squatting and hope to combat that with the point that they were protesting – not squatting.
“We failed to stop them selling off the properties but raised awareness about the issues”
“We weren’t residing in the properties, which is why we will argue in court that the new squatting law didn’t apply – it only catches people who live or intend to live there, and we were protesting. We failed to stop them selling off the properties but raised awareness about the issues,” she said.
“The council hasn’t built housing in a long time and what is being built (not yet finished) is ‘affordable’ (80% market rent) which has nothing to do with social housing. Social housing in Inner London is being increasingly privatised and now that (as a result of recent legislation) councils no longer need to provide social housing, it will diminish even faster,” she added.
Liberal Democrat, Cllr Chris Naylor, from the Camden Council believed that it was important to “build mixed communities” where “council housing” lies “alongside more expensive housing.”
“Camden in the past has been very good at keeping this mix area by area, street by street, and I think it’s a real shame if we lose this,” he said.
However, in spite of all the finger pointing and hot-air blowing, could the housing crisis be more of a socially ingrained mentality – like a tide that is futile to swim against?
Mr Naylor believes that it’s a “fantastic time to be a landlord” who have the upper hand where they can “charge loads” for rent and tenants have little security. Yet, he also provokes the idea of mortgages and house buying being more of a form of social control that is embedded in an age-old class system.
“You don’t need police and security if you’ve got a good mortgage system, you don’t need to beat as many people over the head to stay in line”
“After the First World War, 90 percent of the population were renting now it’s about 30 percent. If you rent you have a different relationship with society. It’s a historical thing; it’s the holy trinity of class. Why are they still called landlords, we still use that term, that tells me everything I need to know where the thinking is in this country. You don’t need police and security if you’ve got a good mortgage system, you don’t need to beat as many people over the head to stay in line,” he said.
“Am I going to protest if I have a mortgage to look after? You’re made to rely upon it. It changes the mindset with an increase in the consequences of personal loss. It’s very effective social control, if you go out and have nothing to lose that’s different. That’s the ideological achievement for the government and I’d challenge anybody who’d oppose that,” he added.
The CFPT are battling to expand their services for private tenants on a London-wide scale to “take on politicians”. But after 34 years of fighting, they say nothing has changed; and with Camden Council saying “there’s nothing they can do,” things are seemingly going to get worse for those who can’t buy into society.
Related links
BBC’s Live Deomocracy – Right to Buy a disaster March 2014
WATCH: London’s Housing Crisis 8 November 2013
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