Home Truths: Labour, Progressive Politics And The Affordable Housing Crisis

As the Guardian noted yesterday, Labour ministers are currently chewing over plans to relax affordable housing quotas, which potentially threatens the existence of 32,000 new affordable homes, particularly in rural areas, where pricing is already inflated.

The article points out that this issue is technically being considered under the auspices of the outgoing prime minister (PM), Keir Starmer; and thanks to his government, we have all perhaps become accustomed to the remodelled, uber-capitalist Labour that echoes Blair’s tenure and at least attempts to efface Corbyn’s. Whether the next PM will reverse this rightward creep and revive the party’s damaged roots remains to be seen. Regardless, as Green deputy leader Rachel Millward discussed in her recent BBC interview, there is something very wrong with how many in the political establishment seem to view housing.

“Houses are, first and foremost, homes; they’re not first and foremost investment vehicles,” she states in the clip above. And to this author it is indeed bewildering that houses are often considered (at least by those who can afford them) as a means of generating profit, rather than as a necessary and fundamental facet of human life, without which we face all sorts of hardships and barriers.

How is it possible that the general discourse fails to acknowledge a truth that one would expect to be axiomatic? That the existence of multiple households on waiting lists, and of hundreds of thousands of children living in temporary accommodation, does not immediately lead to prioritisation of their basic welfare over a superfluous economic gain for those who are already comfortably housed? How can the most vulnerable among us be left without this most essential protection as a consequence?

It makes no sense, and the time is ripe for a politics that supports everyone.

The Green Party’s latest manifesto pledges:

150,000 new social homes each year, including from the purchase of existing builds
£42bn total over the next five years to support low-carbon energy and insulation
A community right to buy
Investment in local health, transport and other services to accompany new developments
Ensuring new builds meet sufficiently high standards
MPs pushing for rent controls, stable tenancies and an end to no-fault evictions

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