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Resolution 5
The Housing Crisis
(1)
This BGCM agrees there is a drastic shortage of affordable housing nationally. The
main cause being the failure of successive governments to encourage the building of
affordable housing, ensuring the housing crisis would ease and the building industry
and economy would be stimulated. Decades of underinvestment in the social
housing sector, de-regulation of the private rental sector and lack of support for the
building of new, good-standard social housing has left UK housing in a crisis.
(2)
The much heralded Right to Buy Scheme is also a major cause of the housing
shortage. Houses were sold off at massive discounts and the money was not used
to build more houses. Furthermore, repossessions and the built in profit these
massive discounts gave meant these houses fell into the hands of greedy landlords
who charge inflated rents subsidised by the very councils who sold the houses in the
first place. Hundreds of thousands of low paid workers on Council waiting lists are
forced to rent from profiteering Tory landlords due to lack of affordable housing and
their quality of life is eroded by having to pay exorbitant rents.
Working people have long had to suffer insufficient, poor, inadequate and expensive
housing, causing social and economic problems, for anyone without sufficient
resources wishing to create a life for themselves and the future generation.
(3)
This situation has long affected working local people in areas of high housing costs in
the UK, meaning they are priced out of the market. Some tenants and leaseholders
in these areas face having their homes subject to being compulsory purchased so
that the estates can be demolished and “regenerated” into expensive homes that
neither tenants nor leaseholders can afford to rent or buy. This appalling hypocrisy
is a form of social cleansing of decent working class people and traditional Labour
voters that resulted in prosecution of Dame Shirley Porter of Westminster many
years ago in the “homes for votes” scandal. This Conference supports estate
regeneration where the primary aim is to improve conditions for existing tenants and
leaseholders and opposes it where the aim is for private developers to cash in and
make loads of money while existing tenants and leaseholders face being kicked out
of their homes.
(4)
This BGCM deplores the lack of social housing being provided by the present
Government, is aware of the affordable housing crisis and believes much more
should be done to build more affordable homes. This Conference calls for GFTU
affiliates to:
•
call on the Labour Party to investigate using council homes as a cash
machine to bridge funding gaps.
•
give local authorities the right to actively purchase houses from the open
market, e.g. ex-council houses and empty properties to increase the stock
of social housing in their area
•
call on the Government to provide funding for a major house-building
programme to build social housing to meet these needs and as a
consequence provide thousands of much needed jobs to boost devastated
local economies.
•
actively campaign for the reintroduction of policies such as the Fair Rent
Act and to pressure the Labour Party to commit to a sustained building
programme once in power, to publicise services available which will help
those faced with housing difficulties.