THE Coalition government is busily building a paradise for the landlords, the latest Shelter Rent Report shows.
In this paradise, private tenants, who can no longer afford private ownership mortgages, are being forced to pay over one third of their income, or more, for private rented accommodation. This is resulting in families, adults and children, going hungry and going without proper clothing, since having a place to live is the number one priority.
The report reveals that families are being priced out of what it calls the ‘out of control’ rental market in 55% of English local authorities.
It found that average rents charged by private landlords were more than a third of take-home pay.
Shelter’s research found private rents in 8% of England’s local authorities to be ‘extremely unaffordable’ – with average rents costing at least half of full-time take-home pay. Just 12% of areas were affordable, it added.
Average monthly rent for a two-bedroom home in London is £1,360 – almost two-and-a-half times more than the rest of England. Shelter said research showed that 38% of families with children who were renting privately had cut down on food to pay their rent.
The government is planning to make the lives of private tenants even more impossible, by the savage cuts it intends to make to Housing Benefit and through the programme that it has taken over from Labour of demolishing tens of thousands of council houses, and massive council estates, so that speculators can build inferior private accommodation, with much smaller rooms, to make super-profits through charging their ‘unaffordable rents’.
The destruction of council homes was, and continues to be, a crime against society.
This was prepared by Thatcher when she brought in the sale of council homes, a policy that Miliband, the Labour leader, has now claimed as his own.
It is a fact that Labour councils in London and throughout the country have destroyed tens of thousands of council homes, and many massive council estates, for the benefit of bankers and speculators to make super-profits out of building ‘unaffordable’ homes. Cameron is merely turning the screw further when he declares that those who are not in work, and are ‘living off’ society, will no longer qualify for ‘social housing’.
It is to be tent cities for the unemployed and the homeless. However, the housing crisis has reached the point where middle class people are moving into charity housing that has been traditionally for the poor. They are paying up to £300 a week for a roof over their heads while at the same time, through no fault of their own, depriving the poor of homes.
Truly, with what lies ahead, the era of massive council house building and low rents will seem like a lost paradise to the younger generations seeking homes – if the coalition is allowed to have its way.
The trade unions, whose members have a vital interest in the maintenance and development of council housing, must take action to defend it.
They must support council tenants who are refusing to be evicted from council estates so that they can be demolished to allow the speculators and landlords to move in. This must not be allowed to happen.
However, there is only one way to resolve the housing crisis. The trade unions must take action to remove the coalition and bring in a workers government that will resolve the housing crisis by nationalising building land, the building industry and the banks.
This will allow a national plan to be carried out to build millions of council homes at affordable rents, and at the same time provide jobs and skilled apprenticeship training, at trade union rates of pay, for millions of workers and youth who are now rotting on the dole. This is the only way to resolve the interlinked housing and jobs crisis.
