Too many tenants languish in squalor (From The Argus)
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Too many tenants languish in squalor
2:30pm Tuesday 21st February 2012 in Comment and Analysis
When my parents emigrated to Canada soon after the Second World War to seek a better life, many of their friends were envious.
But they were back in Britain within two years because the only home they could find was a wooden shack in truly shocking condition.
It had no electricity or sewerage and the only time there was running water was during storms when rain cascaded into the rooms through the rotten roof.
Later, when I left the (much better) family home in London to become independent, I shared a bedsit with a friend.
Crammed rooms
My half of the rent for this horrid hovel took up most of my wage and much of the rest, in winter, went into an electricity meter which had been rigged by the avaricious landlord.
When I started work as a reporter I saw some even more shocking sights which made me angry.
In one basement flat, a woman of over 80 wore Wellington boots for walking about because the floors were flooded with sewage.
There were families crammed into mouldering rooms which were making the children ill and stretching the parents to breaking point.
All this misery, added to my own experiences, made me feel that improving housing was one of the most important tasks facing any government.
Yet housing has usually been low on the agenda whether Labour or the Conservatives were in power.
Ministers do not usually last long in the post, showing how expendable they are, and many simply do not understand how serious the crisis is.
Julian Amery, the patrician former MP for Brighton Pavilion, was Housing Minister for a time in the 1970s.
At one meeting Amery was verbally attacked by a Labour MP who said he could have no idea of what it was like to exist, like many of his constituents, in old, terraced housing.
Amery replied that he had lived his whole life in such a house but neglected to explain his address was Eaton Square, Belgravia.
I soon noticed that most of the moans about housing came from well-organised council tenants.
Sometimes they had just cause for complaint but at least they had secure tenancies and a reputable landlord.
But nearly all the worst cases were, and still are, in the private rented sector.
A new survey shows that in Brighton and Hove more than a third of homes are poorly heated, badly maintained or out of date. Over 8,000 are utterly unfit for human habitation.
Most of these homes are more than a century old and the majority are privately rented. Brighton has one of the highest proportions of homes in Britain falling into this sector.
Hemmed in by the sea and the South Downs, the city has little land for building new homes.
The demand for rented properties is so high that landlords often do not bother to improve their homes because they can let them anyway.
Improvements
It is true that some tenants are so rancid that they would trash any improvements but far too many decent people are languishing in squalor, ranging from students to whole families.
Meanwhile the Government has reduced its programme of offering grants to owners in the city for bringing their homes up to standard.
Its right to buy programme means that the best council-owned properties are disappearing, leaving many families needing homes in unsuitable temporary housing.
Radical measures are needed and it is worth listening to the views of Brighton Housing Trust’s John Holmstrom, a compassionate and experienced man.
He believes that many homes are in such a poor state they should be pulled down and replaced with something decent.
The city would have to make exceptions for the best buildings such as Regency terraces in Hove because of their architectural importance, concentrating instead on internal improvement.
But there are miles of mean homes and many individual larger blocks that have simply reached the end of their lives.
A good example is the old ABC cinema in Portland Road, Hove, which is nothing more than an eyesore.
The city council, whose leader, Bill Randall, happens to be an expert on housing, needs to encourage social providers to put forward schemes.
Architects with imagination could design these modern homes so that they were a pleasure to look at as well as providing decent housing.
Anyone who has lived in rotten conditions, or seen others who have, knows good housing is a basic right.
Far too many folk are being denied this because it’s easy to forget the plight of those in the private sector who have no real voice.
