Preying On The Private Renter by Les May

THE Government is rightly proud that almost 17 million people have received the first dose of a vaccine which it is hoped will make them safe from Covid 19. It has nothing to be proud of in the fact that almost half that number of people, 8 million, are living in overcrowded, unaffordable or unsuitable housing, according to a recent report by the National Housing Federation. This figure is revealed in a report published today with the title ‘Coming Home: Tackling the housing crisis together’.

The new report describes as 'a national scandal' the fact that eight million people in England live in overcrowded, unaffordable, or unsuitable homes, and says that this is 'neither accidental nor inevitable… The present situation is unjust, and the burden of bad housing is falling unjustly on the poor'.

Among the list of recommendations:

- a 20-year political programme to improve the quality and affordability of the nation’s housing stock, agreed by all parties and thus immune to changing political fortunes;

- a redefinition of 'affordability' that relates to income rather than property prices;

- a short-term reform of the benefits system to meet the shortfall between housing support and the true cost of housing;

- a review of tenancy agreements, redressing the present imbalance, introducing an explicit duty of care of landlords for their tenants, and removing Section 21 (”no fault”) evictions;

- an improvement in the stock of temporary housing;

- new mechanisms for improving the existing housing stock, 11 per cent of which is defined as sub-standard, and making it more sustainable;

There is also a draft charter for new housing, which suggests it should be:

Sustainable: adapt and reuse existing building stock where possible; water, waste and energy designed to minimise impact on the environment: plant one tree per house.

Safe: landowner to maintain an interest and participate in the project; design criteria to be built into partnership agreements to ensure compliance.

Stable: encouragement to people to put down roots through community site-management schemes; reference to the wider community.

Sociable: mixed-use dwellings in walkable neighbourhoods; design to ensure that affordable houses are indistinguishable from private-tenure houses, and 'pepper-potted' throughout the site.

Satisfying: use design to create distinctiveness and encourage a sense of belonging; ensure that the development fits into the natural landscape.

Polly Neate the chief executive of the charity Shelter responded to the report by saying: 'It is brilliant to see the Church of England showing leadership and taking action to tackle our growing housing emergency. Looking at how church land can be best used to fight homelessness is extremely welcome.

'Homelessness isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of decades of political failure to build social homes. This is the reason over a quarter of a million people in England are homeless and trapped in temporary accommodation during the pandemic — half of them children.

'The Church is right that homes have to be affordable to local people and tied to local incomes. This is what social housing does, which is why we want to see the Church, the Government, and other landowners play their part in building a new generation of social homes.'

There may be a shortage of affordable housing but there has never been a shortage of worthy reports about the problem. It will be interesting to see if after all the fanfare it is allowed to fade into the background.

We can pray it does not or we can vote for the politicians who will recognise the fundamental economic forces that work against affordability and do something about it. Sixty per cent of the nation’s wealth is reckoned to be held in property, leading to its being regarded as a financial asset rather than a universal necessity. Are we willing to change that?

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Deja Vu? by Andrew Wastling

HOMES are as we all know far more than concrete and brickwork. Our decision makers need to get things right. Some readers may recall that for all of its issues Ashfield Valley did at least provide easy access accommodation for a generation of Rochdale's youth. Ashfield Valley it's often airbrushed out of local social housing history and despite winning a housing award in the 1967 'Summer of Love', it quickly declined and by the 1980s was a double edged sword which on one hand was a notorious haven for drug users, glue sniffers whilst on the other a vibrant safe haven for a small army of squatters , artists and writers as well as being home to a large number of families, OAP's and single people'. 'Ashy Valley' comprised just over 1,000 flats and it's eventual demolition it can be argued artificially increased rents in the private sector locally by reducing housing unit supply , along with Margaret Thatcher's who passed two pieces of major housing legislation in 1980 & 1989.

The 1980 Housing Act extended the right to buy to tenants with generous discounts following decades more than a million council homes were sold at an estimated cost in today's money of more than £60bn. The majority of sold-off homes were not replaced, leaving social housing as a residual tenure. Since 1990, a further 500,000 Council Houses have been sold off. The 2021 local housing crisis has been manufactured by generations of town planners and politicians from all political parties not arrived at by sheer chance.

Writing in the guardian in 2017, Faiza Shaheen, (Director of CLASS Centre for Labour and Social Studies) argued convincingly that thirty years of bad policy have encouraged house hoarding, avarice and the massive accumulation of wealth – to the detriment of the rest of society , pointing out that:

'The richest 1% of adults, some 488,000 people, own 14% of the nation's assets ,– worth about £11tn. At the other end of the financial scale, 15% (7.3 million people) either own no assets at all, or are in debt. And things are potentially about to get a lot worse – house prices are forecast to rise by 50% over the next eight years, according to the National Association of Estate Agents and the Association of Residential Letting Agents.'

Locally we are in danger of repeating the exact same failed solutions to the same problems on local social housing only on a much larger scale.

Despite some of the swearing mandatory viewing of the Tony Wilson narrated documentary Hard-core Valley - Ashfield Valley Flats' (1) might be advisable for those RBH / RMBC making the decisions on College Bank & Lower Falinge. Not least for the nostalgia trip some of us might have seen familiar faces admiring the spiked hair , the dreadlocks ,& colourful punk fashions & music of the time. Readers of Northern Voices will be aware that Cult 1975 novel Rule of the Night, by Rochdale author Trevor Hoyle, is largely based on the estate. (please see Greater Manchester's forgotten Punk Estate : Greater Manchester's forgotten punk estate - Manchester Evening News).

Tragically one of the well known punk squatters , Jon Rimmer, who was a familiar sight once a fortnight carrying a huge bag of spuds over his shoulder bought with his Giro from Ron Chalker 'The Potatoe Mans' warehouse on Mellor Street, walking through town barefoot accompanied by his placid natured alsatian Rebel, was his was murdered in 2019 (Rochdale News | News Headlines | Funeral fundraiser launched for Jon Rimmer - Rochdale Online) whilst the various disparate tribes making up the valley were dispersed locally to Sheffield, Hebden Bridge, Totnes and Brighton and some as far afield as to the anarchist squat in Christiania in the heart of Copenhagen. It was the end of an era for many. The start of a long journey of self-discovery for others.

In Wilson's documentary there is an unfortunate incident of camera photobombing by an unwelcome local politician ( Cyril Smith ) who was renowned for avoiding the estate & its residents like the pneumonic plague when cameras were not present and it came to doing his job as town MP. The documentary is a snap-shot in time from Rochdale's housing archive. To see this vile politician brazenly stand beside the flats and shamelessly say he's been an MP for eighteen years tells it's own story when we are mindful that his brother Norman held a Rochdale Council housing portfolio at the time.

As does some rudimentary investigation of which local establishment politicians who oversaw this social housing scandal who are still unbelievably active in local council politics well past their sell by date?

As with Ashfield Valley asbestos is reportedly present in College Bank. Lower Falinge has taken over the unenviable & undeserved mantle of a 'failed estate' from Ashy Valley - despite having wonderful community initiatives and brilliant residents who struggle to maintain a vibrant community despite being consistently failed by Rochdale Borough Housing and local politicians of all parties over the decades.

Our mainstream media frequently uses social stereotyping images of Lower Falinge when they wish to indulge their penchant for poverty safaris to illustrate numerous & serial articles on 'welfare dependency' & 'broken Britain'. Ashfield Valley was a planning & delivery disaster that could & should have been averted. It was an abject failure & scandal, a 'masterclass' in how not to run social housing. The demolition of Great Howarth by Rochdale Borough Housing and the current state of and proposals for College Bank and Lower Falinge - as well as other Rochdale Borough Housing managed properties - shows that absolutely nothing has been learned by our decision makers who seem intent on making the exact same mistakes, using failed 'solutions' to mediate what appear to be institutionally engrained repeated failures with getting to grips with social housing in Rochdale over half a century.

Proving there's nothing really new under the sun .We can see that Rochdale already has considerable form when it comes to home regeneration, redevelopment, failure & eventual demolition due to years of mismanagement of housing stock by criminal & inept local politicians.

Am I alone in getting a sickening sense of Déjà vu about RBH kamikaze plans to demolish College Bank flats?

What's the betting Rochdale's local propertied class once again trouser private rents hand over fist in the aftermath of this exercise in turbo drived gentrification?

Historical Archive:

Tony Wilson's 1990's documentary : Harcore Valley from Granada and Simon Armitages ' Xanadu from 1992 both give powerful insights into a community about to be demolished and can be seen on YouTube.

In Hardcore Valley : Tony Wilson focuses on the marginalsied voices from the Estate both old and new in Granada TV documentary made during the demolition of the infamous Ashfield Valley estate, Rochdale. early 1990s The piece now stands as a fascinating piece of social history into an era in the history of Social Housing which has been airbrushed almost completely from history by local Town Planners intent on seeing history repeats itself

In Xanadu : Simon Armitage focuses on housing problems on the notorious Ashfield Valley Estate in Rochdale, Lancashire. To the background sound of the estate being demolished, Armitage discovers that life is continuing there in gentle and surprising ways. The only remaining caretaker is a survivor of the 1956 uprising in Budapest, while a neighbour rescues local stranded cats. One couple are not looking forward to moving from their immaculate flat, and another resident is cultivating a forest in his home.

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'Affordable Homes' in Rochdale & Beyond?

6,374 - 33 = 6,341

by Andrew Wastling  

______________________________________________________

TODAY's report from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), Joint Greater Manchester Combined Authority & AGMA Executive Board Scrutiny Pool , Social Housing , (Councillor Richard Farnell, Portfolio Lead, Planning & Housing & Eamonn Boylan, Portfolio Lead Chief Executive for Planning & Housing, 7 April 2017), reveals that  just  164 so-called 'affordable homes' were secured through Section 106 agreements with developers.  Only 20% of these, or in actual numbers , 33 homes were for so called 'affordable rent' - itself more expensive than 'social rent'.

This same report (1). adds that:

'By contrast, there remain low levels of new affordable homes being delivered through the planning system via s.106 agreements, where the challenge of scheme viability makes it difficult for authorities to secure affordable homes in a G[reater] M[anchester] market context.  The latest figures from CLG show just 164 affordable homes secured in 2015/16, 80% of which are for affordable home ownership or shared ownership. That total is a significant increase on previous years, so it may be that this is the start of an upward trend, though it is too early to be confident.'

Readers can draw their own conclusions on claims that these figures represent  'a significant increase on previous years', I am sure!

The report goes on to confirm that  Rochdale has  a total of 6,374 households on the housing waiting list.  Additionally of Rochdale's dwelling stock in 2015 only 21,370 was non Private Sector whilst we had over three times , or 70,070 , dwellings in the Private Sector -  numbers which tell their own story simply by themselves.

file:///C:/Users/awast/Downloads/08_Scrutiny_social_housing_April_2017.pdf

Isn't building homes for those in desperate housing need a much more constructive solution to Britain's severe housing crisis than criminalising and fining the homeless as Rochdale Council seem intent on doing with their draconian PSPO - Public Space Protection Order ?

These figures also beg the obvious question of is it really wise to consider  'some options of demolition'  of College Bank flats, when we clearly already have such considerable unmet housing need already in our town ?

Finally I'm just wondering how many, if any at all, of these 33 'affordable homes' were actually built here in Rochdale to meet our growing local housing need or to house the 6,374 households on our waiting lists?

Manchester Housing Plan or 'Social Cleansing'

One Man Liberal Democrat Opposition: Cllr. John Leech

MANCHESTER Council has been accused of social cleansing* as it refuses to guarantee affordable homes in a development involving up to 2,500 houses.
Today (20th, Jan. 2017), in another of Manchester's heated council meetings, the sole opposition member, Liberal Democrat John Leech, unravelled the council's plans to build 2,500 homes in the city centre, not a single one of which is guaranteed to be affordable.
The Manchester North development, recently approved without a single Labour councillor questioning the lack of affordable homes, is one of several large developments in the city.  Yet not a single one of the proposed homes is certain to be affordable.  This plan has now been labeled 'Labour-style social cleansing.'
When the sole opposition councilor, Lib Dem. John Leech asked Councillor Bernard Priest if he could guarantee that any of the 2,500 homes would be affordable.  Mr Priest said he 'could not give that guarantee'.
Councillor Priest added that he 'anticipated the council would continue to be led by Labour politicians for a considerable number of years', but still wouldn't commit to making any of the 2,500 new homes affordable.
The Liberal Democrat councillor John Leech, has challenged the proposals, accusing the council of 'Labour-style social cleansing based on who can afford to live in the most desirable parts of the city.'
He said:  'This council continues to put profit before people. It is unacceptable that so many people have got their life on hold while this council continues to prioritise expensive houses for sale and making profit from land instead of genuinely affordable homes.'
As South Manchester's MP of ten years, John Leech, criticised decisions in 2013 when plots in Chorlton on Darley Avenue for 86 homes were sold off by the council to private companies for profit, rather than saved for affordable housing.

Councilor Leech then added: 
'This city is in desperate need of good quality, genuinely affordable family homes near existing public transport links and infrastructure, and we need to start taking this seriously. To build 2,500 new unaffordable houses is an insult to the 14,000 people currently on waiting lists across the city.
'If this council is committed to building genuinely affordable homes then why are they refusing to guarantee even one of these 2,500 houses will be affordable?
'This council put effort into help for first-time buyers but has shown little interest in affordable homes to rent. Why, in a development as large as these in West Didsbury and the City Centre, should not a single home, not one, be up for affordable rent?
'We need a balance of affordable homes to rent and buy across all of our communities in the whole of this city, not a Labour-style social cleansing based on who can afford to live in the most desirable parts.'
 The councillor, who was on fierce form despite receiving a barrage of personal comments and mocking from the 95 strong Labour group, also criticised the council for recently approving a housing development on Cavendish Road, West Didsbury without insisting on any houses being available for affordable rent.

*  Social cleansing (Spanish: limpieza social) is class-based killing that consists of elimination of members of society considered "undesirable," including but not limited to the homeless, criminals, street children, the elderly, sex workers, and sexual minorities^{[clarification needed]}.^[1][2][3] This phenomenon is caused by a combination of economic and social factors, but killings are notably present in regions with high levels of poverty and disparities of wealth.^[1][4] Perpetrators are usually of the same community as the victims and are often motivated by the idea that the victims are a drain on the resources of society.

Housing, People & Regionalism in the UK

by Brian Bamford  

AT the Green Gathering in the Methodist Hall Oldham Street in Manchester, last Saturday, Dr. Roz Fox from Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), a qualitative analyst, said: 

'The city of Manchester is the fastest growing city outside of London, and there have been interim talks about the city needing 200,000 homes by 2030.'  The academic  argued that 'housing is not just about bricks and mortar, but more importantly 'about people; the local labour market; land availability and social facilities.'   

This all has now to be accomplished in an era of public service cuts and an increasingly ageing population.  

This has to happen at a time when devolution is becoming fashionable.  According to Dr. Fox, the challenges now are what type of properties are required, and most important how do with involve people in the decision-making.   

Meanwhile, last Tuesday, in Haringey civic centre councillors were heckled while debating plans to rip communities apart, and hand control to a private entity.  Aditya Chakrabortty wrote about the Haringey case on Friday 20th, January 2017:  'At its heart is a programme that is among the most audacious I've ever seen.  Haringey wants to privatise huge swaths of public property: family homes, school buildings, its biggest library.  All of it will be stuck in a private fund worth £2bn.'  The fear is that areas of north Manchester between Bury, Rochdale and Oldham something rather similar is in danger of happening as armies of protesters gather to protect what they perceive as the threat to the Green Belt. 
In an article about anti-social behavior in the North East, Neil Tweedie in the Mail on Saturday last November, claimed that 'Grimsby is a long way from the oak-paneled conference rooms of the government departments in Whitehall...' but that 'Cameron's project to "cure" Broken Britain (started in 2011) ' had cost '£450m' and it had 'achieved nothing-apart from exposing Whitehall incompetence, deceitful councils, the vanity of politicians... and how they squander YOUR money'.

Regions of the UK

In England, the culture of centralism dominates in a strange way of a kind of surburban relationship and attachment to London.  In 1905, the novelist Henry James declared:  'All England is in suburban relation (to London).'  
Since the beginning of the 20th Century the south and particularly London have come to dominate the English economy and culture.  The historian, Tristram Hunt, in concluding his book 'Building Jerusalem' (2004) wrote:  'The corporate and financial stampede southward was quickly followed by the political parties, the media (including the Manchester Guardian), the professional establishment (from lawyers to doctors to accountants to architects), the cultural elite, even the representatives of organised labour.' 
Centralisation is the problem confronting this country.  One or two comments last week, on this NV Blog suggested that DevoManc, as it is now being presented, is a top-down phenomena.  
The regions and localities of the England, unlike Scotland, lack the self-confidence and imagination required to promote a bold self-identity that could compare with provinces in France or the regionalism on the Spanish peninsular.  Notions of federalism seem alien in the English regions. 
I think that in Northern Voices' we have identified a broad North-South dichotomy, but the various particular regions lack confidence and up to now have had a provincial insecurity in relation to the metropolis that is London. 
This has not always been the case, Tristram Hunt again in 'Building Jerusalem' wrote:  'In the Victorian era, that metropolitan imperialism appeared out-dated as the great northern civilisations established themselves as core components of the cultural firmament.' 
Neither the Green Gathering last Saturday nor the Andy Burnham Manifesto Meeting last Thursday tackled this problem of building an awareness of regional identity, although in the workshops of the Burnham meeting it was asked 'How do we change mind-sets?'.

The Future of Federalism in the UK?

In France the French Revolution finished off the work of Louis XIV and gave France a powerful highly centralised state.  In Spain the Liberal Revolution imitated this development.  Then in both countries came a reaction to this centralisation with movements for greater local and municipal liberty. 
In France this reaction was best expressed by Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who put forward those ideas which, he believed, the French Revolution had come into existence to fulfil, but which had been diverted by the ruthless political action of the Jacobins. 
In Spain, with its intense provincial feelings and local patriotisms, one would have expected the movement towards decentralisation to be even greater,but because of the consequences for Spain after the Napoleonic Wars and the fact that Carlism drew into its ranks many of the forces of resistance to Liberal centralism, these feelings didn't for some time make their appearance among the parties of the Left.  Only as an result of the work of Pi y Margall, a Catalan, who knew and understood the social and political ideas of Proudhon, did he grasp that these ideas best suited the aspirations of his countrymen.  It was through the efforts of Pi y Margall that the Federal movement in Spain grew in the 1860s.  
Unlike France and Spain, no such popular radical movement to express the local and regional spirit in a federalist manner has yet developed in England.  This may be because as an island we have been isolated from the continental currents which are still prevalent in Europe.  It may be because anarchism and organised regionalism, have been half-baked traditions.  Marxism, even though the Communist Party itself has never caught on in Britain, has had a wider influence in the universities than anarchism or federalism.

Green Party & Future of Housing

Future of Housing and remembering Deyika Nzeribe, Green Party Gathering

       by Manchester Green Party

Date and Time

Sat 21 January 2017

14:00 – 16:00 GMT

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Location

Methodist Cental Buildings

Oldham Street

Manchester

M1 1JQ

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Open to all:

JOIN us for one of our regular Green Gatherings. Due to the sudden death of our Greater Manchester Mayoral candidate, Deyika Nzeribe, the event will combine a focus on housing with a chance to remember Deyika. After some thought we felt that this event should go ahead as Deyika was passionate about providing good quality housing for all.

We will be discussing the future of housing in Manchester and Greater Manchester. as well as celebrating the life of Deyika We want to hear ideas from you.

What will happen?

There will be speakers with a question and answer session on the topic of housing

Speakers include:

Dr Roz Fox

Roz is a Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University where she teaches on the undergraduate Public Service degree and Masters programme in Public Administration

Roz is also the academic lead of the university wide Social Housing Innovation, Research and Enterprise (SHIRE) network that provides research, consultancy and support to housing associations and their customers across the North West and Cheshire.

Charlotte Allen

Is a member of Steady State Manchester. She helped draw up Steady State's paper ‘Housing in the Viable Economy’ which will shortly be available on our website. She is also a member of Greater Manchester Housing Action.

She trained as an architect and town planner and worked in London and Lancashire before going to Mozambique, where she lived for nearly 30 years, working in urban and rural development.

Following this there will be a conversation around the life of Deyike Nzeribe. We will talk about the projects he was involved with, what he wanted to achieve and how we can pay tribute to him.

Expect: free flowing ideas, a relaxed open atomsphere, biscuits, a chance to have conversations about housing.

Don't expect: long speeches and quizzes on obscure policy points.

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