Don’t believe what you read about millionaires in Council Houses

Superb piece on the Red Brick blog last week (http://redbrickblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/time-for-the-guardian-to-shape-up/) about the latest absurdities of Tory Housing policies.

The proposal, trailed in the Guardian earlier this month, to cap “rent subsidy” at a household income of £60,000, (which would mean that a couple on £30,000 each could see their rent rise by about £70 a week) is seriously flawed for three reasons.

Firstly, it would disincentivise work, and discourage anyone in social housing from getting on in life.

Household income of £60,000 may seem like quite a lot (it is certainly more than my household earns in a year), and may seem like a sensible threshold for rent subsidies to be cut off at. However, a family with Mum and Dad both working on average London earnings of about £25,000 each would only need one grown-up child living at home and earning £10,000 a year (working part-time while studying, for example) to hit that threshold. Such families are not, by any stretch of the imagination, rich. But under the Tories plan they would either have to take a pay cut, move their earnings into the black market – or abandon their council home if they can no longer pay the higher rent.

Secondly, it would further stigmatise social housing and turn more housing estates into ghettoes of the poor or workless.

Many of the council housing estates in popular parts of London , like Blackheath, are a genuine cross-section of society, with the well-off living alongside the working poor, those who are out of work, and pensioners. Some are tenants, some are private owners who have exercised the right to buy (or increasingly, who have bought their home from someone who had), and some are renting privately from such private owners who have entered the buy-to-let market.

Forcing out social housing tenants whose household earnings go above a threshold, particularly one as low as £60,000, would fracture these communities, uproot children from schools, and make it less likely that tenants are in work – surely contrary to any mainstream welfare reform agenda, from the Right or the Left. It would turn the pleasant, socially mixed housing estates of today into the sink estates of tomorrow – just like the estates which were the centre of such unrest in the 1980s. The Conservatives are a bit like the Bourbons of pre-revolutionary France, who “learned nothing and forgot nothing” about their period of rule. Likewise, the Tories seem to have neither learned nor forgotten the disasters of post-war Housing policy, and are running the risk of repeating its worst mistakes.

If the Tories are wanting to free up social housing by forcing tenants on higher incomes to move out, then logically they should do the same to right-to-buy homeowners, who bought the best council homes, at a huge discount below the market value: homes that in most cases would be in the most demand.

But of course, this would run contrary to the Tories’ hidden agenda: to demonise anyone who rents a council home. Loelia Ponsonby, one of the wives of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, once said that “Anybody seen in a bus over the age of 30 has been a failure in life” (a quote often misattributed to Margaret Thatcher). The Tories now apply a similar argument to anyone, of any age, who rents  a council home: they are automatically suspect and should be made to feel they are receiving it out of charity – and should never forget this charity will be withdrawn as soon as they do well in life.

Social housing tenants are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t: if  they are unemployed or low earners they are condemned as feckless and lazy and have their tax credits taken away; if they worker harder, win promotion and earn more, they now stand to lose their home.

What’s more, Housing Minister Grant Shapps implying that all social rents are “subsidised” is just plain wrong – many Council’s rent budgets are self-funding, and some actually produce a surplus that goes into other council services or back to the Treasury.

Thirdly, the policy misses the point.

The real problem is lack of affordable housing (a shortage that is set to get worse as Tory polices mean hardly any new affordable homes are being built). It is absurd to argue that affordable housing would suddenly be plentiful if only all those high earners moved out and freed it up for those on low incomes. New lettings are already in effect means tested, as you have to be in priority need to be housed quickly by a local authority or a housing association. As Red Brick points out, the numbers of genuinely rich people in social housing have been exaggerated, and cannot  be more than a tiny proportion of the total (as far as I know, these supposed millionaires in Council Houses have never been identified). So if the Government tries to force only very well-off people out of existing tenancies, it may grab some headlines but would only free up a few homes, at most.

But then that’s what this ludicrous plan is all about – headlines rather than homes.

Seren Park and Maze Hill station: the path to nowhere carries on…

The Seren Park flats are just feet away from the platform of Maze Hill staiton – but residents have to walk on a detour of hundreds of metres to get there

How long does it take to remove a padlock on a gate? At Maze Hill station it is taking three years and counting.

That is how long it has taken residents of Seren Park (the new development on the south side of the railway) to get the direct access to Maze Hill station they were promised when they rented or bought their flats. The delay is causing huge frustration to the residents of Seren Park, who have to walk on a long detour via Vanbrugh Hill to get to a station platform just a few feet from their block of flats. it has also caused problems for residents of Tom Smith Close next door, who have seen holes appear in their fence and are not used to their cul-de-sac being used as short cut to the station.

Those who read my post of December 1st last year, or who have read elsewhere that Network Rail had reached agreement with the developer back in February over payment for “access rights” to the station, may be wondering why the gate is still padlocked shut, despite lots of lobbying by residents, all three councillors for Blackheath Westcombe ward and local MP Nick Raynsford.

One reason is the wait for an Oyster card reader to be installed – we were told in March that this could take six weeks, which expire later in April. Ominously, Network Rail and Southeastern have muttered about further delays after that – which does not tally with what Network Rail said in mid-February, when their chief executive David Higgins wrote to local MP Nick Raynsford to say that “agreement has now been reached” between Network Rail and the developer, that getting a legal document finalised was just a formality, and that the path could open as soon as an Oyster card reader was in place.

GLA Member Len Duvall and I have asked Southeastern (and Transport for London, which supplies the Oyster readers) to confirm that the path will be opened as soon as it is installed, and to hurry up. I hope that residents can be reassured that once the Oyster Card reader is in place the gate can open immediately.

In the meantime, it would be helpful for any residents concerned to join us in asking Network Rail, Southeastern and the developer Urban Solutions what on earth is going on, why the Oyster  Card reader wasn’t installed months ago, and when the gate will finally be unpadlocked. If you want to do so via me, please do so at alex.grant@greenwich.gov.uk and I will be happy to pass emails on.

Local people have been very patient and have been treated shabbily. I will keep the pressure up until this gate is finally opened.

Tories threaten hundreds of private tenants in Blackheath and Westcombe Park

Think the new government’s changes to Housing Benefit will only effect people living in Kensington and Westminster? Think again. They may well force dozens of households in Blackheath and Westcombe park to economise or move out.

In Blackheath Westcombe ward, there is a real mixture of housing types, with millionaires often living next door to low-income families, the unemployed, and pensioners on low incomes. The 2001 census showed that only slightly more than half of households are owner-occupiers – another fifth live in the private rented sector, and a further quarter live in council homes or housing association homes. The 2011 census currently being carried out is not expected to show any great changes to these figures.

By and large, the different groups of people get on together well. There are no ghettos in Blackheath Westcombe ward – almost every street will contain people from all three groups (owner occupiers, private renting and social renting), and even on the Cator Estate there are some council homes. There are no large council estates containing only people renting – the council estates in the area are small, dotted about, and they all contain leaseholders who have bought their homes, and people who rent these homes from private landlords, as well as council tenants.

This rich mixture is now under threat. Like many areas of London, Blackheath and Westcombe Park could increasingly become somewhere where only the affluent or those lucky enough to have a secure tenancy on a council or housing association home can live (The new government is also threatening those secure tenancies, but that’s another column).

Council and housing association tenants may be mostly unaffected, as their rents fall below the threshold for the new caps that the Tories are introducing. The real sting in the tail is for those who rent private accommodation because they cannot find council housing locally, or have always lived renting from a private landlord and do not wish to move into more affordable homes, which in Blackheath and Westcombe Park are in very high demand.

These tenants will be faced with a double whammy: the Local Housing Allowance (the kind of Housing Benefit that most of them receive, known as LHA for short) will in future be fixed at 30% of the highest rents in the area, not 50%. There will also be a maximum cap on the total housing benefit payable, and for those who are under 35 the LHA they can claim will only be enough for a room in a shared house or flat, not a flat itself. Some may be able to absorb the extra rent bill, but many will be forced to move – it is estimated that across London as whole, 80,000 households may be forced to move.

Greenwich Council figures – and these are from politically neutral council officers, not Labour party spindoctors – estimate that most, if not all, the 114 households in Blackheath Westcombe ward which currently get LHA will lose out. Almost all will lose least £10 a week, many will lose more than £20 a week, and a few will lose more than £30 a week. Indeed, the highest average loss of Housing Benefit of any ward in the Borough (almost £16 a week on average) is here in Blackheath and Westcombe park . Many people living in privately-rented one-bed flats in outer areas of borough like Eltham and Abbey Wood will not lose out. But in areas like Greenwich, Westcombe Park, and Blackheath, where rents are higher, hundreds of households will lose out. These people are your neighbours, and many will have to either economise or move. And don’t fall for the tabloid myth that most of these people are workshy scroungers: 40% of Housing Benefit claimants are in work, and many of the others will be disabled or retired.

The government says it has put measures in place to help ease the pain, The first is a “Transition scheme”, which means that for some tenants the changes will not happen for another 21 months from now. But whenever the transition occurs (and the date is pretty arbitrary, based on the calendar month when your housing benefit claim was first made) it will be a cliff-edge, not a gradual transition – you will suddenly lose up to £50 a week from your housing benefit, with no phasing.

The government is also putting some extra money into the “Discretionary Housing Payment” budget. Discretionary Housing Payment (or DHP) is an extra pool of money that the council can use to top up people’s Housing Benefit in cases of genuine need, and I have seen its good effects: when a working single mother living locally approached me fro help some months ago to say her private landlord had put the rent up higher than the LHA level, I helped her obtain a DHP to tie her over while she looked for somewhere cheaper to move to locally, so she did not need to uproot her children from school by moving suddenly to somewhere cheaper far away.

But just as the total Housing Benefit bill for Greenwich is likely to be cut by £1.6m, the DHP allocation for Greenwich is being increased by a mere £20,000 from £320,000 in 2010/11 to £340,000 in 2011/12 – a small sticking plaster to cover a gaping wound left by the Tories’ cuts.

The Campaign Starts

I will never forget when I first heard when the general (and local) election campaign in 2010 had officially stated – I was in the residents’ lounge meeting people living at Wentworth House, a sheltered housing block on Charlton Road, with Nick Raynsford, Pat Boadu-Darko and David Gardner.

We were not sure that Gordon Brown had gone to the palace until a tenant there told us when we were visiting on the morning of Tuesday April 6th. Nick was introducing himself and was unsure whether or not to say the election campaign had started, until we were told that the TV had just announced that it had.

I have never been a fan of glitzy campaign launches, so I was pleased that the opening hours of the campaign here were spent by us in Blackheath Westcombe ward, visiting senior citizens in the sheltered blocks with not a camera crew or flashbulb in sight.

We started off by visiting Langton Way and Wentworth House, the two council-run sheltered blocks in the ward, and then the BUPA block on Westcombe Park Road. It is good to see a permanent manager in place at Wentworth House (Wentworth is in fact one of my middle names – I have never worked out where the Wentworth name of the local block comes from, and whether it is form the same source as mine!). At Langton Way, tenants have been concerned for some time about the poor state of the windows and kitchens, so it is good to hear that work to replace them will start in the next few weeks.

At the BUPA Home, we met with a number of residents, including a very sprightly 99-year-old and another lady whose son, a teacher, had just retired. We are now in the age of double retirees- parents and children who are both retired. Many residents we met in their eighties or nineties are now still very fit and active, and want to live as independently as possible in sheltered blocks like these, not be consigned to homes. It was humbling to see the pride they had in the area they live, their interest in local issues and the fresh ideas they had on who to improve things.

They all seemed pleased to meet us, regardless of their voting intention, and it was great that e spent the time meeting real people and dealing with their concerns, not in a media bubble.

Vision vs reality on Seren Park

One of the most useful things to do as a councillor is to go and see a problem for yourself, rather than rely on what you are being told. In particular it is always instructive to go back to a new housing development once it has been occupied, and compare the reality with the glossy CGIs that were shown to the planning committee when planning permission was given, and see what lessons can be learnt.

Two weeks ago I went to meet some residents at Leamington Court, a “new” block just off Vanbrugh Hill (though it is actually an old block from he early 1970s which has been reclad and remodelled, with a new timber facade). The block was given planning permission about four years ago but building work only finished about a year ago. In many ways it is a good development, with a mix of affordable rented homes and shared-ownership homes for those on higher incomes in Leamington Court. A larger block next door (not yet completed) is largely private flats, but there are also some affordable homes in there too.

The overall development is called Seren park (Seren is Welsh for ‘star’, apparently ) and is just to the south of Maze Hill station – the best way to have a good gander is from a passing train. Along with other labour councillors, I have been pushing the railways for several years to get a proper gate from the new development onto Maze Hill station, to avoid the big detour via the Vanbrugh Hill footbridge. Progress has been promised soon, but the residents I met two weeks ago had more immediate concerns.

Why is it that brand new housing so often has snagging problems? The block is fairly clean inside and many of the flats have great views over Greenwich, and London beyond. But there was a two-day period two weeks ago when residents had no hot water. Due to a malfunctioning fire safety system, several floors had an irritating alarm beeping away 24 hours a day on the landings when I first went to visit. There is also a general perception that the block has needed a lot of repairs since it was built, and these have not always been carried out to a high standard.

Moat, the housing association concerned, has to its credit promised to deal with the problems quickly and when I visited block again with David and Pat last week the hot water was working again and the beeping alarm had stopped. I hope the more deep-rooted problems get sorted out soon, as this block should be a great place to live in for both the tenants and those in the shared ownership flats. We will be keeping a close watch and maintaining pressure on Moat if needed.

New Homes in Charlton and Blackheath

Last week I was shown round the Charlton Triangle (a number of former council estates in Charlton just on the eastern side of the motorway, now transferred to Charlton Triangle homes, a housing association that has improved and redeveloped many of them) with fellow councillors Allan MacCarthy (Charlton ward) and Barbara Barwick (Woolwich Riverside ward).

It was great to see all the work that has been done to improve homes there, or in some cases build new ones (such as the newly-completed homes pictured here, replacing old prefabs on Rectory Field Crescent).

Allan and Barbara are two of the nicest people I have ever met in Greenwich, in politics or for that matter any other sphere. Allan is currently Mayor of Greenwich and Barbara is his deputy, and is due to become Mayor herself in May (elections permitting). They wear their chains of office lightly, being unaffected, entirely unpompous and seeing this sort of engagement – seeing the practical difference that is being made to Greenwich residents’ lives- as just as important as the more formal part of their duties.

Charlton Triangle is just one example of how affordable housing across Blackheath, Charlton, Kidbrooke and beyond has been transformed in the last ten years. Over on the western side of the motorway in Blackheath and Westcombe Park, there has been less redevelopment (as most of the blocks here were built to last), but millions has been spent on new roofs, windows, kitchens and so on at council homes, and new affordable homes have been built at Restell Close and Belfield Close. As we all know, property prices remain very high and there remains a great need for good quality new affordable homes – which can be tricky in Blackheath owing to the shortage of available sites and high land values.

Many blocks on Westcombe Park Road and Beaconsfield Close are getting new roofs and windows shortly. At the Kidbrooke Park estate (Brook Lane and thereabouts), where Labour was out door-to-door in recent weeks, homes have been given new windows and many blocks have just had entryphones fitted. To the south, the redevelopment of the Ferrier has already started. A large part of my time as a councillor is spent dealing with queries from tenants and leaseholders in council homes – despite its prosperous image, almost a quarter of homes in Blackheath and Westcombe Park are managed by the local authority.

Greenwich is one borough that will meet its target to bring all its stock (apart from a few estates that are due to be redeveloped) to the “Decent Homes” standard by the end of 2010. You do wonder if this would have happened under a Tory government, or whether a Tory government would fund any more improvements – when I first became a councillor in 1998 hardly any work had been done to the housing stock locally for years because of budget constraints imposed by Whitehall. All that has changed.

Alex Grant