Council of despair: Mr Cameron ‘signals end of council houses for life’

I grew up in a council house. I was never happier than when I lived there and I was proud to have come from this estate (which was actually more like a garden village). I have, by the way, never been able to refer to myself as having grown up in ‘social housing’ as in my day, ‘council house’ just meant ‘built by the council’ and told you nothing about the people who lived in such housing, who were no different (in jobs or economic and social outcomes) from those few who owned their own houses, down the road.

Professionally, I have advised five housing ministers on ‘social housing’ and the London Mayor on affordable housing design issues. I’m kind of passionate, knowledgable and yet unromantic about this stuff. So in not entirely agreeing with the Prime Minister I do so not as a party animal or social housing ‘activist’. I have been attempting to find answers to our dysfunctional social housing estates for some time and some radical overhaul of policy is clearly vital. Less a ‘nudge’ than a kick up the arse in fact.

However, at the first opportunity the PM has taken a wrong turn. This is because he is not clear what problem he is trying to solve. By threatening to evict tenants whose circumstances improve such that they have a job, Mr Cameron seems to be dealing with one problem – the need to see more turnover of properties enabling those on the waiting list to access social housing – by worsening another – the link between social tenancies and worklessness. Does he not realise that by telling people they cannot stay in their social tenancies if they obtain a job that will lead to people giving up their jobs to keep their tenancies? It will be the perverse consequence of his policy. He will be strengthening the moral hazard of social housing whilst thinking he’s doing the opposite.

I note further that Mr Cameron thinks that access to social housing should be by ‘need’. So if you are no longer as needy as you were when you went in, you should leave and make way for someone else ‘more needy’. This is to completely misunderstand the catastrophe which hit social housing in the late ’80s. The very problem of residualised social housing estates where no-one works was caused by three things – well, four if you include closing the pits and killing manufacturing – that previous Tory governments did which Labour never reversed: One was the sale of council houses; the second was legislation prioritising ‘need’ and specifically ‘homelessness’ over other criteria and indeed over local authority discretion; the third was the collapse in supply.

The answer to the first one has been found in Wales. Stop selling council houses. The answer to the second is to restore local authority discretion over who gets a home and/or to allow other factors (such as being in work, being committed to training or having good references frankly) to take precedence over ‘need’. The homelessness route has virtually caused people to declare themselves homeless or otherwise abject in order to jump the queue. Finally, the collapse in supply of social (and other housing) in the last 25 years has meant that too many people have been chasing too little stock leading to rationing – with the consequence it has become the tenure for people with no choice.

To then reinforce rationing and residualisation by expelling from the stock those with a job is a form of stupidity available only to the quite clever – and someone who’s never had to grow up in such places. I cannot see that Cameron’s views and Iain Duncan Smith’s views align. And, if they do, they are both wrong. I add: I wouldn’t like to be a Liberal Democrat with a city constituency after this proposed reform goes live.

Poll: Is Cameron right to suggest council houses should no longer be granted for life? Vote now