Bell Adeiro-Addy is the Labour MP for Streatham.
The necessity of a campaign for council housing has never been greater. With a chronic lack of investment into affordable social housing, innumerable numbers of people are being forced into the private rental market where Section-21 No-Fault evictions are rife, landlord abuses and neglect are endemic, and rent prices are extortionate as a result of demand far outstripping supply of affordable housing. The continuation of the Right-to Buy and the extension of this to housing association homes has only deepened this crisis. This is why we need a concerted effort through a campaign for council housing.
The benefits of council housing are glaring to everyone except those who stand to benefit from the profits of the private housing market. I have seen two schools in my area close, St Martin’s-in-the-Fields and Archbishop Tenison’s CofE High School, and while there were a few contributing factors to this, the single biggest one is the lack of children coming into the schooling system. People cannot afford to have children in my borough and people with children cannot afford to live in my borough. This is causing the closure of good schools that should be the bedrock of our community. It is time for us to decide whether London is supposed to be a place to grow and educate our children or whether it is simply a playground for the rich.
Public ownership of the housing sector is something that we should be working towards. Politicians of all persuasions often talk about building more homes. They don’t talk enough about the type of homes we need to build: more council homes! The private sector doesn’t have an incentive to produce high quality homes with affordable rents and any profit made is pocketed. Council housing would not be profit driven and any revenue would be injected back into the public sector, a system that benefits all of us as opposed to our current system that exploits the many for the few.
The time is now to act and I’m proud to support the Labour Campaign for Council Housing.
Labour Campaign for Council Housing 