Radio review: Streets Apart
Posted: September 11, 2017 Filed under: History, Right to buy, Social housing Leave a commentOriginally posted as a column for Inside Housing on September 11.
In case you missed it, you still have chance to catch up with a superb history of social housing that ran over the last two weeks on Radio 4.
Lynsey Hanley’s Streets Apart told the story from the beginning of council housing in the 19th Century in Liverpool to the present. I got the impression that most of it was made before the fire at Grenfell Tower, but its shadow looms over everything.
Why is the series so good? Partly that Lynsey Hanley knows what she is talking about (as author of Estates: An Intimate History and Respectable: The Experience of Class). She is also an engaging presenter with an accent not normally heard on Radio 4 that comes from her upbringing on the Chelmsley Wood estate in Solihull.
Partly because her interviewees know what they are talking about: they are a mixture of experts in local areas, in architecture, planning and housing and local residents who are given time to tell their stories.
But also because she recognises the nuances and contradictions in the history of social housing and in its present: Michael Heseltine comes out of it surprisingly well for the minister who introduced the Right to Buy; another Tory minister Harold Macmillan gets the last word; and the final episode features more than one side to current regeneration controversies.
Her message may be obvious in one sense and, as she says, naïve and utopian in another: in the wake of Grenfell Tower, housing needs the same national priority as health and education.
But the thesis behind it is also a challenge to those of us who would agree with all of that: ‘Social housing in Britain has suffered from the flaw of being regarded as being only for poor and working class people and not for everyone.’
The day Mrs Thatcher came for tea
Posted: August 3, 2017 Filed under: London, Right to buy, Temporary accommodation | Tags: Dispossession, Havering 2 CommentsOriginally published as a column for Inside Housing on August 3.
If the Right to Buy has a birthplace it’s a terraced house at 39 Amersham Road in Harold Hill, near Romford in Essex.
True, the sale was the 12,000th rather than the first and 11 August, 1980 was not the actual birth date of the policy either.
However, both have come to symbolise the Right to Buy because this was the place and that was the day that Margaret Thatcher came for tea.
The former prime minister joined the Patterson family, who had bought their home for £8,315 after 18 years as tenants of the Greater London Council (GLC).
Two things came together to remind me of that photo opportunity this week: first, archive footage used in the film Dispossession (full review to follow soon); and second a good investigation by the local paper of hidden homelessness in the area.
The Conservative manifesto plan for council housing
Posted: May 14, 2017 Filed under: Affordable housing, Council housing, Right to buy | Tags: General Election 2017 Leave a commentThe Tory ‘council house revolution’ trailed in all today’s papers begs all sorts of questions that I’ll be blogging about soon (now up here).
In TV interviews today we’ve learned that there is no new money, just the £1.4bn for affordable housing promised in the 2016 Autumn Statement.
Conservative spokespeople refused to say how many homes were involved but the Autumn Statement said 40,000.
If that is welcome news it hardly qualifies as a ‘revolution’. However, the policy includes other details that could prove to be more significant in the longer term.
Given that all today’s reports are based on a Conservative Party press release that I can’t find anywhere online, here it is:
What the snap election could mean for housing
Posted: April 18, 2017 Filed under: Council housing, Right to buy | Tags: Election 2017 Leave a commentOriginally published on April 18 on my blog for Inside Housing.
Here are some quick thoughts on what the snap General Election might mean for housing.
First, what about the campaign? Labour and Jeremy Corbyn will make a housing a big part of their alternative vision for Britain.
There will be lots about council and social housing and lots to appeal to private renters. Housing will be more prominent in the campaign of one of the two major parties than it has been for years.
But will any of that matter? Theresa May and the Conservatives will not need to say much about housing because their campaign will be all about Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn.
Housing won’t matter much to any of the other parties either as the Lib Dems try to win back seats by appealing to Remainers and the SNP and Plaid use the looming Tory apocalypse in England to win votes in Scotland and Wales.
