WITH HOUSING IN CRISIS CAN CO-OP’S TAKE THE STRAIN?

It was shocking to follow the saga of the Home Secretaries domestic arrangements. Hubby at home in Redditch watching porn whilst she was in, her ‘main’ home, her sisters back bedroom in London!

Whilst cabinet ministers are busy making do with two (or even three) homes at the taxpayer’s expense they are unlikely to want to reform Britain’s housing system. In what other job can you build up equity in a second home that you can sell tax free when your job ends!

They say the global banking crisis has its roots in an unsustainable housing model in the US sub-prime sector. Gordon Brown was quick to blame our difficulties on the US – except when President Obama was in town then he is nauseatingly obsequious - but here in Britain we have our very own sub-prime disaster.

The single biggest privatisation of the Thatcher years was not the utilities or the nationalised industries but the sale of our council housing stock. A privatisation that gave the original tenants a windfall gain, a house at less than market value. But that has over time seen a large transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

The propaganda that houses could only go up in value meant home ownership gave millions, many of whom had never had any debts an asset against which to build up huge debt. Collectively that mountain is now unsupportable with £1.2 trillion of housing debt and £1.4 trillion of total debt equivalent to the annual output of the UK economy.

Rather than creating a viable housing system Government policy has lead to disaster - the standstill in house building making this the worst housing crisis since the Second World War.

Back to Jacqui Smith, her Redditch constituency contains the largest new build housing Co-op in the UK. Redditch Co-operative Homes is a great success for those who live in its houses but with only 200 it can only make a small contribution to solving the housing crisis.

The UK Co-op Housing sector consists of some 35,000 homes in around 650 co-operatives sounds large but there are about 25 million homes in the UK. So why is the co-op sector after twelve years of Labour Government still so small?

One would not expect a party that felt here was no such thing as society to see the social benefits of housing co-operation. The increase in social cohesion and stronger communities is well documented in co-op’s. The 1988 Housing Act which introduced the current funding regime of a mixture of grants and private finance meant that large housing associations with strong management and a substantial asset base cleaned up most of what was a relatively small budget.

The sad fact is that Labour has done little to support co-op’s whether deliberately or as a sad side effect of its obsession with all things private the result is the same the registration of new co-ops virtually dried up in the mid 1990’s.

The Government through the Housing Corporation was only interested in a business model of housing management. Nic Liss, chair of the Confederation of Housing Co-op’s says that as the regulator the Housing Corporation simply had no interest in tenant involvement. Of course for that involvement to be meaningful a co-op does have to be relatively small so that members can have real control over their property.

The effect has been that today even the United States with 6,400 co-ops with 425,000 homes has a bigger co-op housing sector than the UK. Other countries also have significant co-op housing sectors, such as Germany (2.2million homes), Sweden (750,000), Norway (750,000), Austria (334,000), Canada (92,000) and Turkey with (1.4M). So how can we build a more substantial co-operative housing sector?

That is the remit of the independent Commission on Co-operative and Mutual Housing. Chaired by Adrian Coles, Director General of the Building Societies Association, it aims is to build the evidence for a long term strategic framework for the growth and management of the sector.

What changes in the law, taxation and general attitudes are needed to foster a growing co-op housing sector? The truth is that much of our housing policy and law is distinctly feudal in character after all what does the term ‘landlord’ imply? The very best landlords have often been local councils although as a council tenant for many years I know councils, even some run by socialists, do not always make good landlords!

Time to abolish landlordism I say!

For more information on the Commission on Co-operative and Mutual Housing go to: www.cch.coop or www.humancity.org