How Not to Improve Housing Stock

Using public transport is a useful way of getting to know people within a community and waiting by the bus stops I have often fallen into conversation with folks from the village. One major topic has been about the fate of some bungalows. The elderly residents were moved out to new environmentally sustainable housing that was built near the centre of the village, but the old properties sat empty for a while. While they needed updating, they were good solid structures, and as there is a shortage of social housing, I really hoped that the council would retain them. I even wrote to my local councillors making suggestions of how that could be done. But the properties were demolished. To me that was a waste.

Also the council have been, and still are, in a process of refurbishing the social housing stock in the village. Some of this work has been major work causing disruption to the tenants. One woman I know, told me that she had to have her kitchen floor dug out and replaced as the floors in the properties were seriously damp. The other works included replacing doors and windows, as well as heating systems. Then to add the icing on this metaphorical cake, extra insulation was added to the properties making them much more energy efficient and cost effective to live in. On the whole I think that people are pleased with the results.

However, I was still puzzled by the councils actions of demolishing perfectly good housing stock when there is a need for these houses. Especially as the council plans to build more homes in the village.

Now I could go into a detailed explanation of how central government funds social house building and not local government, but that would you dear reader as much as it would bore me. Suffice to say, the decision to demolish housing or refurbish homes is often dependent upon grants from central government. Equally local authorities need grants from central government to build new houses. Therefore local councils housing policy is often dictated by the economic realities of the grants provided as well as the conditions (strings) attached to these funds.

While checking the news headlines I came across this story. It suddenly became clear why the local council were demolishing existing properties. As the Government (central), gave a commitment to bring the social housing stock up to a basic standard, my local authority is enabling its self to meet the government targets by demolishing perfectly good houses so that they can meet this.

This is truly twisted logic, as if the houses that were demolished were left until the funds were available to bring them to this basic standard, then there would be the social housing stock to fulfil the need for social housing. Now the council needs to build twenty more homes just to replace what has been lost. As the local authority has already announced that in my village thirty new homes will be built, the net gain will only be ten new homes. I am far from being a NIMBY (Not in my back yard), and I know that there is a real need for affordable social housing. But new building should only be used once all the existing properties have been refurbished, improved or adapted.

As I have said in previous postings here before, the local council has been demolishing many hundreds of houses in various areas within the borough. This was done as these were houses that were deemed to be causing social problems. Predominantly they were properties owned by private (slum) landlords who did not care about who they housed. Therefore they were properties often in a poor state of repair and with extremely high rents. The council reasoned that people did not want to live in these houses so they were surplus to requirements.

When in fact what was needed was refurbishment of these properties and the council stopping the rouge landlords from creating the social problems in these areas. To enable the local authority to demolish these homes, the council used compulsory purchase powers, so why not use these powers to buy this housing stock and refurbish them therefore adding to the housing stock for social need rather than destroy sound housing.

There is no sense in the actions of this local authority and there housing actions are geared just to meeting targets rather than geared to meeting housing need. On the logic that the council are operating on, if the local authority demolishes all its houses it can claim that all there homes meet basic standards required by government. But if I were to suggest that the local council will think that's a good idea and do that.

The requirement for local authorities to bring their housing stock up to a basic standard was and remains a very good pledge, as morally people in social housing need to expect a better standard from a social landlord than folks often get from private landlords. It will empower the local authority and the tenants of private landlords to press the poor quality landlords to improve private rented stock as well. As it is now, poor quality private landlords can escape their responsibilities by simply arguing that they are no worse than council housing.

I really do wish that someone would apply some sense to the housing policy in Britain. As I have repeatedly said here in previous postings, there is no shortage of housing, not in this area nor large parts of Britain either, the problem is the affordability of housing. In this village just this morning I counted twenty properties that are available to rent, but on checking the asking rents are at least twenty percent higher than is reasonable.

Demolishing houses will only add to the problems of affordability and feed into the situation that created the banking bubble, and the inevitable crash. Please can we have some common sense? Oh I forgot sense is not that common!