There was one small victory in the form of the Renters’ Rights Act bringing the end of ‘no-fault’ evictions, but it’s a very small step. Conversely, the improvements heralded in the Leasehold Reform Bill have faltered in the face of freeholder resistance.
When Awaab’s Law was introduced, we were told that it would force improvements by requiring social landlords to make repairs within set timescales. But private landlords were exempted, and nothing was done to close the enforcement gap. This law remains a dead letter for the majority of those who might otherwise have benefitted from its provisions.
Decades of complex legislative and social changes have reversed the post-war political commitment to ensuring that working class people have access to good housing. During this time, power has seeped away from tenants and residents because we have lacked a coordinated tenant and resident movement. But this is what is finally showing signs of developing.
People have waited in vain for successive governments to do better on housing. And all the time, landlords and developers continued lobbying to remove the ‘burdens’ that obliged them to deliver the desperately needed, genuinely affordable public housing in exchange for the millions of pounds granted to them from the public purse.
As council funding was squeezed, local authorities sold off their remaining council housing, and shut down the many varied forms of tenancy and homelessness support that aided those who needed extra help to live a stable life.
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In the absence of a coordinated tenant and resident movement, developers, landlords, and managing agencies, were abetted by rightward-shifting government housing policy and were able to act almost completely unchallenged, but for the efforts of a cluster of dedicated housing activists and campaign groups who refused to relinquish the belief that it doesn’t have to be like this.
Now, there is a mood to build tenant and resident power through the formation of a national, democratic housing union. Helping to lay its foundations has been Social Housing Action Campaign’s (SHAC) most important call to action. Through scores of conversations with tenant and resident organisations and activists, and in consultation with our members, we held a conference in October to begin the work of turning the vision into reality. It is a collective acknowledgement that tenants and residents must change the fundamental, systemic, and structural issues that lie at the heart of our housing problems.
Our new taskforce to deliver the housing union begins its work early in the new year. Like a trade union, such a body would support tenants and residents with individual casework, but also empower estate-level campaigning. It will advocate for legislative and political policy changes that favour tenants and residents, not landlords, and it will provide an alternative narrative to the media which is more tenant and resident focussed.
The union is needed to unite renters, shared owners, and leaseholders, whether their landlords are councils, housing associations, or private companies. And while the founding conference was hosted by SHAC, the initiative is collectively owned by a taskforce formed of a wide variety of campaign partners, activists, and individual tenants and residents.
The housing union project will seek its primary support and partnership not from landlords or government who have failed the working class so badly on housing, but from the trade unions who have both the funding and reach to take it onto a mass scale. Find out more and get involved at https://shaction.org/a-national-housing-union/.
Suzanne Muna is secretary of the Social Housing Action Campaign
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