“There is a lack of political will to fix our broken housing market,” says your leader (28 March). In fact, there is political will not to fix it, because to offer any degree of stability to today’s nascent and growing families would need more than “flatlining” house prices; it would need prices to fall back to a realistic multiplier of local earnings, which is something this government will not have, as evidenced by the outrageous shovelling of public money to development-sector shareholders through Help to Buy.
There should, as you say, be public control over development land, and greater security for tenants, including rent control. You could add penal taxing of vacant property; a separate-use class for second homes; and the taxing of inherited property wealth which continues to widen social division.
But none of this will happen until Generation Rent is sufficiently populous to be electorally threatening and plausible politicians are putting its case. On present indications, that won’t be in time for the 2020 election (and there won’t be one sooner because the Tories are comfortable with a derelict opposition).
John Worrall
Cromer, Norfolk
• Your powerful editorial almost says it all in just 14 column inches. But the housing white paper is well worth reading, as it offers a case study of Germany’s system of land pooling. For decades the UK has suffered from not applying lessons from European cities (which Sir Peter Hall set out in Good Cities Better Lives). Before we leave the European Union, all political parties should understand why German cities and others have outperformed ours and created much fairer societies. Only then can we start to compete on equal terms.
Dr Nicholas Falk
Director, The Urbed Trust
• Robert Booth’s article about the conversion of the London borough of Barnet’s council offices to flats, 96% of which will be “smaller than the national minimum space standard of 37 sq metres (28 March), prompts me to tell the story of a garden grab by another London borough.
I live in a small flat in a block in Brondesbury which is owned by Brent council. To the rear of the flats is a small lawned area and what remains of 12 small garages, which were neglected by the council and became ruins. The council, which has forbidden residents from parking in the front drive, has now put forward plans to use the small garden to the rear of the flats to build “at affordable rents” two bungalows, a one-bedroom and a three-bedroom flat, with space for two cars and bicycles.
At least six other blocks of flats owned by Brent council have had or will have their gardens taken for the construction of flats. I and others object strongly to this monstrous idea. This is not a Nimby objection – I understand the need for more homes for the homeless – it is that so small a space as the garden area should be taken for such a construct.
I hope Robert Booth will look into these garden grabs – how many other councils are trying the same kind of trick.
John Corrin
London
• On the day that Robert Booth reported “Anger over developers’ ‘rabbit-hutch’ flats”, the Daily Telegraph’s front page led with an exhortation to cut the red tape that is supposedly strangling enterprise. If the coalition government hadn’t listened to the likes of the Telegraph and their developer friends, the rabbit hutches would not now be being converted from failed 1960s office blocks, courtesy of an amendment to the 1990 Town and Country Planning Act.
There were failures in the mass house-building plan of the 1950s and 60s, as is well known, but the tenants who moved into the new council blocks were generally delighted with the space, the light and the warmth, as well as the views.
Many of the failures were due to subsequent mismanagement – broken lifts etc. Who will manage these monstrous new conversions? I doubt that many of those who end up living in them will do so out of choice. Someone will be profiting and, unless the blocks are sold to a single landlord, the chance of decent maintenance is almost zero.
In the latter part of the 20th century, Peabody and other Victorian housing providers knocked two or more typical two-room flats into one. It’s possible that this Brent eyesore might be habitable if that were done, but it still leaves the matter of tenants’ security.
The price of failing to ensure a decent and secure system of rents and tenancies, in appropriate buildings, will simply ensure a further increase in mental and physical ill-health, as Julia Park, the architect cited in Robert Booth’s article, suggests. The NHS may be a hotter political potato than mere tenants, but the two are inextricably connected. Housing is a fundamental part of a healthy society. The NHS can’t afford more failures.
Judith Martin
Winchester, Hampshire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
