The real housing crisis - low wages, high rents and mortgages

Research published by the Halifax Bank has named four Devon districts as having the least affordable housing in the country. North Devon comes out worse, with the average house prices being 9.1 times the average yearly wage. East Devon, Teignbridge and the South Hams are the others in the top 10 named by Halifax. Devon (and Cornwall, which also figures in the top 10) suffers from a combination of low wages, lack of social housing, and extensive second home ownership.

The shire counties were the test bed for the mass privatisation of council housing via 'Arms-Length Management Organisations' or ALMOs, also known as Housing Associations. The then Tory government thought that it would be easier to push through in rural areas, which generally it was. New Labour has taken this to the large towns and cities, where it has met with a mixture of success and fierce resistance.

An exception in rural Devon (Exeter still has substantial council housing) is Mid Devon, where a local campaign, with significant involvement from a Socialist Party member in Tiverton, stopped the proposed privatisation of council housing stock. Needless to say, Mid Devon is not included among the most unaffordable districts.

Very little social housing is built now, and any that is built is unlikely to make much inroads into the waiting list of 1.6 million people who would like it. This number doesn't include those who don't add themselves to the waiting list, because they know that realistically they will never get it.

Thatcher's scheme of allowing council tenants to buy their homes (Right To Buy) decimated the national council housing stock. Many of the council homes sold have ended up in the hands of unscrupulous speculators who have been part of the 'buy to let' trend encouraged by the years of house price increases and readily available credit from banks. Both of these conditions are now largely a thing of the past, but the vast polarisation of wealth that the Tories and New Labour have helped to increase means that there are still plenty of private landlords out there, renting out rooms in shared houses to individuals families that ten years ago would have been able to live in a three bed semi for the same rent.

We now have a situation where it is incredibly difficult to either buy a house or rent one cheaply from the council, putting more and more people at the mercy of these unregulated landlords. The real housing crisis in Britain today is not the declining house prices, a problem mainly for the middle classes who see where they live as an investment rather than a place to live. It is the countless workers and their families who have to work increasingly harder to pay extortionate rents and mortgages on quite modest dwellings. It is the sheer shortage of housing that in rural areas in Devon mean people cannot live where they grew up or work, and in urban areas mean increased tensions as racist politicians, not limited to the BNP but including New Labour, exploit it to stir up divisions amongst the working class.

Hypocritically, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats have criticised the Government in the wake of the report, but they are equally to blame. The housing policies of the three main parties are fundamentally the same when they have power at national and local level.

The Socialist Party (and it's predecessor Militant) is quite different, as the record of Liverpool City Council in the 1980s, in which Militant councillors played a leading role in a Labour administration, shows. The city's council housing stock was comprehensively modernised, with families moved from tenements and flats to houses with front and back gardens, in addition to thousands of houses and flats being improved.

The demands we have today are very reasonable:

- A mass national house building programme, the homes to be of a high standard, with gardens, and with a range of sizes.

- The houses to be owned by the local council, who will not be permitted to sell them. All income from rents to be ringfenced and used for maintenance, upkeep and the construction of new homes.

- Council lease to allow for the homes to be passed from generation to generation, security of tenure, and for residents to modify and decorate their homes without having to jump through bureaucratic hoops.

- Housing estates and new towns to have dedicated public transport links such as train stations and bus stops and routes.

- Infrastructure such as schools, GP and dental surgeries, health centres, parks, Post Offices and local shops to be built alongside new housing.

- End to council tax rebate for second homes. Nationalisation of any homes that are not the primary house of a person or family, with compensation provided on the basis of proven need.

- Increase the minimum wage to £8 per hour and restore trade union rights to enable workers to fight for better economic and social conditions.

- For the creation of a new workers' party to campaign for these demands, and lead the fightback against neo-liberalism, privatisation and the rule of profit in general.