Read about the privatisation of public housing ( known as council housing in Britain ) as experienced in the UK. In Victoria we are going down the same path of
stock transfers. In fact the process has been well underway in Australia for years. Homelessness nationally is escalating - but nobody is joining the dots ... Instead of open, reasoned debate and accurate information, we get endless spin and whitewashing, accompanied by propaganda against public housing / public tenants.
In Victoria public housing has been estimated to be an asset worth 18 billion dollars.
Corporate Watch : Newsletter 17 : Registered Social Landlords - The new Corporations
Keith Parkins
'Housing associations, or Registered Social Landlords as they
are now known, are becoming a powerful oppressive force within our
communities.' - Mike Lane, campaigner.
'You get videos showing how marvellous your house will be, fantastic
bathrooms with palm trees on the wall - they're a delight to the eye.
But it isn't true. Tenants from Tameside will tell you the promises
weren't fulfilled, repairs weren't done, their homes weren't renovated.'
- Austin Mitchell MP
'Some of their new housing is hideous to look at. Some of their
relationships with tenants are poor. Their record in repairs is not
necessarily one of the best and their responses to queries can be
slapdash, when supplied at all. In being accountable for what they do,
they have a poor record.' -
Gerald Kaufman MP
'Tenants' campaigns against stock transfers, promoting alternative
council housing manifestos and demanding improved public services are,
in practice, an integral part of the growing international movement
against the WTO. It may start with opposition to Labour's privatisation
plans but it is rooted in wanting a better world for all free of
exploitation, commercialism, greed and corruption.' - Dexter Whitfield,
'Defend Our Council Housing'
Much of what we take for granted -
free health care, welfare, social housing - we take for granted without a
second thought. Yet none of it existed in the 1930s. Illness could lead
to debts for life, housing was back-to-back slums, and if you were out
of work, you starved.
Then came the social reforms of the 40's
and 50's. But the rot started to set in again under Margaret Thatcher,
and has accelerated with a vengeance under her inheritors, Tony Blair
and New Labour. Until Thatcher, social housing was under the council,
and nobody envisaged anything else. Then came the 'right to buy'; when,
in an attempt to undermine labour councils, housing was sold off at
prices which bled the community chest dry.
And now, following on its heels, the wholesale transfer of the
remaining council housing stock to Housing Associations. They are
so-called social housing landlords, but often, in practice, are closer
to property companies, and becoming synonymous with fat cat salaries,
deteriorating properties and rising rents.
But this has not stopped the process. Take Tyneside, for example,
where the social housing is still council owned - just. The council has
amassed a £4 million war chest to lower council taxes for the next
election: meanwhile, its estates are in an appalling state of repair.
Tenants have been told that privatisation is the answer.
In fact, the transfer of council housing to a housing association or
company threatens tenants' rights. Council tenants' secure tenancies are
replaced with less secure 'assured' tenancies, making eviction easier.
Rents are, on average 17 percent higher than council rents. There is
little, if any,
accountability. Tenants have no automatic right to
representation on a Housing Association board of management, and tenant
board members are often excluded from decision-making. Large salaries
are the norm rather than the exception. By 2001, the pay of Housing
Association chief executives increased by almost three and half times
the rate of inflation.
Forty-seven percent of Housing Associations breached government rent
guidelines for 2001/2. There is also increasing evidence that Housing
Associations are contributing to the growing homeless crisis. According
to the Housing Corporation, evictions rose by 36 percent between 1998
and 2000. In Scotland, Housing Association evictions rose by 64 percent
in two years. There was also a large rise in the use of the
controversial 'Ground 8', which, under an Assured Tenancy, allows for
automatic possession orders for thirteen weeks' rent arrears, even if
these are due to housing benefit delays.
Transfer of housing stock to Housing Associations is, say
campaigners, nothing less than back-door privatisation of social
housing. And as with PFIs and PPPs, the cost to the tax payer escalates,
and tenants suffer deteriorating services at higher costs. This has to
be seen within the context of WTO/GATS wholesale transfer of public
services to the private sector, where private greed overrides public
need (and removes any form of democratic control or accountability). Of
the 106 areas to be liberalised (ie opened up to the private sector),
housing is one. All transfers of housing stock will be subject to open
competition and could be acquired by international private landlords.
Such 'liberalisation' may even specifically prohibit Tenant Management
Organisations, which could provide a democratic, accountable alternative
to both housing associations and council housing.
Campaigners opposing the privatisation of our social housing should
also be opposing GATS. And vice-versa. It is our complacency which is
letting what we take for granted be, not eroded away, but wrenched away.
'We are told that the private sector can raise the money to invest in
modernising and repair the housing stock - creating a utopia in social
housing. I never realised that the bankers, brokers and consultants were
philanthropists, moneymakers with a social conscience. But the housing
transfer scandal is not solely about handing over public assets to the
private sector - it's about the dismantling of our social fabric,
removing public assets from democratic control' - Mick Graham, housing
rights campaigner.
