Brown to build more council houses
You know the scale of the crisis in housing in Oxford, so here’s some news to gladden the heart: the Mirror is reporting that Gordon Brown is to allow councils to keep rent money from council housing, and relax the rules that prevent councils building more council houses. Oh, I hope the Mirror’s sources are good. I can’t do better than their editorial:
The return of the council house would be a glorious legacy for any government. Local authority accommodation is the only way to rescue thousands of low income families from over-crowded, squalid or expensive homes. Gordon Brown’s ambitious plan to sanction a huge building programme will excite Labour’s traditional supporters. With councils now constructing as few as 100 new houses a year, those on waiting lists have little hope. Not every family can afford to take out a big mortgage and buy their own home. The return of council, or social housing as we must now call it, is an initiative that will be worth voting for.
And about time.
Really hope this is right. We desperately need more housing.
God, please let this be true!
Matt
Did you grow up in one?
No, why do you ask?
You would know the meaning of the words ‘2nd class citizen’ if you had.
I’d like council housing to be an option for a wider group of people who can’t afford to buy or afford huge private sector rents, so that people who live in council houses aren’t second-class citizens, Ian.
Ian: You are right that council housing did become a 2nd class environment (but still better than being homeless). Ken Livingstone makes the point that council houses used to have social classes A and B living in them before the Tories sold all the good ones off for a pittance and left all the most problematic, disadvantaged people huddled in the few affordable houses left. My parents lived in a council house and it was fine, my Aunty still rents the same council house.
House building has plummeted (both private and public but especially public housing) - why wasn’t local authorities allowed to use the proceeds of council house sales on building more houses?
The Tories have created this housing apartheid and unfortunately Labour have done little to reverse the problem (through fear of middle England who have disproportionate power because the current electoral system makes their votes more important than everyone elses.
Here is the link to Ken Livingstone’s comments on council housing (amongst other things). It is about 22 paragraphs down.
Without wishing to launch into a re-tread of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, when I was a kid we used to dream of living in a council house!
They had luxuries such as central heating, indoor toilets, and security which private landlords in the 1960s either could not or would not guarantee, and you didn;t find the council turning up unannounced and letting themselves in to do maintenance.
I would have found the cherry-picking of the best council houses to practically give away a lot easier to take if it had not gone hand-in-hand with the systematic destruction of social housing’s reputation.