Politicians talk about it often but nothing substantive ever seems to happen. As the credit crunch bites deeper and New Labour’s inflated housing market collapses; as construction companies come crawling to the state for open and hidden subsidy, Norma Anderson asks where now in the fight for Affordable Homes?

When we make calls for ‘affordable housing’ what do we mean?  Are we talking about housing for rent or cheap mortgages?  Thatcher used the idea of owning your own home as a political weapon, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong with owning your own home. It is capitalism and the desire for profit that drives decent and secure homes out of the reach of millions of our fellow citizens.

The housing crisis was bad enough before the credit crunch and economic downturn. I would argue that under the current circumstances, the call for affordable housing must primarily mean a major programme of house building for social housing for rent in the public sector i.e. council housing.  I’ve been playing my old tapes from the sixties and seventies recently – a golden age of music in my opinion matched by a golden age in housing provision.  Well, okay, maybe not - on either count – but there HAVE been significant deleterious changes in public housing provision since that time, driven by the insane ‘free market’ ideology of Thacherism and its subsequent embrace by Blair and New Labour.

Between 1980 and 2005, more homes were sold to sitting tenants than were built by the private sector. It is worth noting that this trend has changed over the past ten years, as the rates of new house building in Scotland have increased significantly. Since 1995, new house building has been more significant in increasing home ownership levels than the Right to Buy. Conversely, Right to Buy sales have mainly seen a downturn since their peak in 1989, and have declined by between 12% and 14% over the last two years.  (Source: The Scottish Government The Right To Buy In Scotland - Pulling Together The Evidence, 2006)

A number of factors have played a part in this downturn.  Some councils, including my own council in Moray, have recently suspended the Right To Buy.  However, sales had already declined because of depleted stocks and the fact that the ‘best’ houses were the first to be purchased under the discounted Right To Buy scheme. 

Historic trends in new build showed peaks in the early 1950s and late 1960s resulting primarily from programmes of post-war reconstruction and slum clearances. From a high point of about 41,000-43,000 completions a year, mainly in the public sector, the level of new build fell during the early 80s to under 20,000 completions per year. Since then, there has been an overall upward trend to just under 25,000 completions per year during the past few years, predominantly due to private sector new build which currently represents over 80% of all completions. The remainder of new build is predominantly by housing associations.  (Source:  The Scottish Government Housing Statistics for Scotland: 2007)

These statistics, of course, come from the height of the most recent ‘boom’ in the housing market when it was common for banks and building societies to offer unsustainable mortgages at 4-5 times an individual’s annual salary.  House prices were artificially high due to a restricted market and the paucity of the affordable public rented sector.  As Steve Arnott pointed out in his 2007 Draft policy paper on housing for Solidarity

‘Those ‘lucky’ enough to have got their feet on the so-called property ladder were, and are, mired in high levels of mortgage debt with disposable incomes extremely vulnerable to upward fluctuations in interest rates’.

Now, of course, the credit crunch has hit us and home owners are worrying about the cost of their mortgages and whether their houses are now worth less than they owe on them – i.e. whether they have been pushed into a state of negative equity.  The policy of encouraging runaway house prices to create the illusion of increased wealth for one sector of society at the expense of shutting out the rest from decent affordable housing is now exposed as a short-termist and unprincipled disaster

The last quarter of a century has seen significant changes in housing tenure. In 1982, under 40% of households were owner occupiers. By 2005, this had risen to nearly 70%. Although there has been a similar pattern of change across much of Europe, the change has been particularly dramatic in Scotland, where the level of owner-occupation has increased by almost a third since the early 1980s  (Source:  The  Scottish Government Housing Statistics for Scotland: 2007)

Those of us old enough to remember living under a Thatcher government will remember the vast sell off of council housing which began under her administration – and has continued under Major, Blair and Brown.  Thatcher justified her programme of privatisation by conning a willing public into believing that she was creating a ‘share owning/home owning democracy’.   Of course people were going to buy their council houses – especially long term tenants who had accrued a massive subsidy under the ‘right to buy’ scheme – but the net result was a huge fall in the number of council houses available for rent.  Furthermore, the money councils made by selling off their housing stock was not invested in new build – in most cases it went to pay some of the huge housing debts owed by councils following the post war building boom.

The impact of the Right to Buy on the distribution of tenure in Scotland has been significant. Nearly half a million sales of public sector stock have taken place since 1980 and, almost 26 years after sales began, the tenure mix has been transformed entirely. More than 67% of Scottish households are now owner-occupied - almost double the proportion of owner-occupation prior to the introduction of the Right to Buy.  (Source: The Scottish Government The Right To Buy In Scotland - Pulling Together The Evidence, 2006)

Going even further than Thatcher, New Labour tried to eliminate council housing in Scotland altogether.  Compliant councils, told that there is no alternative sought to sell-off their council stock to private housing associations and abrogate their historic responsibility to provide housing to rent for those who need it. The carrot held out to these councils has been that if they persuaded tenants to vote for stock transfer then the council’s historic housing debt would be cancelled and written off.

Increasing numbers of tenants (and some councils) have seen through such undemocratic chicanery. Within the space of about a year in 2005/2006 tenants in four councils in a row – Edinburgh, Stirling, Renfrewshire and Highlands - voted to reject this blackmail. New Labour has never explained why it is possible to write off this debt only if councils go down the road of housing stock transfer.

The case of Highland Council is not untypical. Highland Council’s housing debt is around £153 million pounds and recent figures have shown that for every council house available there are a dozen individuals or families on the waiting list. This doesn’t include the many thousands of workers and young people who don’t put themselves on any waiting list because they haven’t a chance, and who are stuck in high price, insecure private rentals.  High house prices and high private rents are crippling many ordinary working people in the area.  This is a scenario which is replicated across Scotland.

‘In 2007, 200,000 people were on waiting lists for affordable social accommodation to rent in Scotland, and 8,000 homeless families were living in B&B accommodation.   In a written answer to a question from Tommy Sheridan, Scotland’s Housing Minister confirmed that official homelessness across Scotland had risen by 38% under New Labour. In East Ayrshire, East Renfrewshire and Fife homelessness had nearly doubled, while North Lanarkshire and the Highlands had seen a doubling and trebling of official registered homelessness. Nearly 40, 000 households in Scotland in 2007 were households without a home.

Official homelessness tells only half the story. Many low to medium income workers, people on benefits, and young people are trapped in unsuitable and insecure private rented accommodation with little or no prospect of achieving housing stability either through buying or renting - with all of the concomitant stresses such a long term position entails.’   -  Steve Arnott. Solidarity Manifesto, Draft, 2007.

Other councils throughout the UK must follow the example of councils like Moray and stop selling off their housing stock.  We welcome the SNP government signalling a moratorium on the Right to Buy as a first step.  But much more requires to be done.  Socialists, housing groups, trade unionists and the SNP government should demand that the Westminster Government write off all historic housing debt, releasing that money for new and improved council housing.  Furthermore, the SNP administration should prioritise funding for significant numbers of new council homes at affordable rents.

We need the legal requirement on all councils to meet waiting list need in their area to be backed up with hard cash.  Councils should be given the power to require developers, in return for planning consent, to hand over a percentage of properties in any development to the council for affordable renting. Also, the term ‘affordable home’ – which has almost become an easy ‘out’ phrase for politicians - needs to be given a binding statutory definition that actually means something for those seeking, and unable to find, decent affordable housing.

The issue of affordable housing has always been a key issue for socialists. It is about to become a huge issue for society generally. In areas where solidarity members have campaigned on this issue on the streets there has been a great public response. Ultimately, only in an independent socialist Scotland, with the construction companies and financial institutions taken into public ownership, can the dream of quality affordable and secure housing for all be realised.