Good Intentions

 

 

2001/2 to 2022/3
Net additional dwellings, England

Wildfires in the Palisades, driven by winds of over 100 mph

Two events have prompted this blog; the Govt has recently announced its intention to increase the number of social housing units. And secondly, this morning I heard an American woman describing her family’s amazing luck as, having fled the raging fires in the Hollywood area, they returned to their Palisades' neighbourhood to see the miracle that was their intact home which had somehow escaped the fire while many adjacent houses had been completely burned out. Their comments of joy underlined the exceptional but essential, existential core of the meaning of home.

Daniel Hewitt in front of some of the Croydon flats

Perhaps no reminder was required of how precious one’s home to the physical, mental and emotional health of any individual is, but it was an excellent political response by the Labour Government to commit to increasing the supply of homes in England. Indeed, its 2029 manifesto included a commitment to build 300,000 new homes annually by the mid-2020s and to supply 1 million new homes by the end of the current parliament. Currently, the housing supply in England is below that ambition of net additional dwellings at 234,000 during 2022/23. ‘Net additional dwellings’ is the main measure of the total housing supply used by the Government and is based on local authority estimates of their gains and losses of dwellings during the stated period.

 One example of many mouldy, damp corners

In early 2021 an ITV reporter, Daniel Hewitt, visited a block of flats in Croydon after being tipped off that the excuse of the Covid lockdown was being used by some landlords not to keep up with much-needed repairs. To his horror, he found rooms with ceilings and walls covered with furry black mould; dirty water pouring down walls into buckets or on to electrical sockets; sodden carpets squelching underfoot. His broadcast went viral after which his team began to receive emails which underlined that his Croydon example was not a horrifying single exception. There were numerous other similar cases in other areas. The result is that three years later there is The Trapped, an eight-part series which details what the original team of reporters found in Croydon and in other areas.

There appear to be differing housing standards in the 
local authorities of England

The most horrifying information for me is that the owners of these appalling flats and multi- occupational buildings are not the vilified rogue landlords of old ripping off defenceless families, but councils and housing associations, and the tenants, in the main, are ordinary working people paying regular rent and making repeated requests for repairs and basic improvements, often desperately needed. Interviewees testified, again and again, about how their accommodation was exacerbating existing illnesses or causing new asthma and skin conditions leading to anxieties and stress. Many expressed frustrating feelings of powerlessness and shame at their shocking living conditions and of their

desperation to escape.  Daniel Hewitt, the original reporter who stumbled on this appalling chapter of conditions existing in a relatively rich country, sums up the situation rather well: “This isn’t a story about housing; it is a story about power.” As an example, he quotes the case of a woman featured in The Trapped, living with terminal cancer in a squalid, mould-infested room and experiencing difficulties in breathing. Once ITV’s involvement was revealed to the local council, she was re-housed in decent living conditions within days.

See the text above.