The question is housing, but have we got the right answer?

By Vincenzo Rampulla / @VMRampulla

Finally the left has found a fight to take to the coalition. Douglas Alexander’s call to action on the government’s cuts to housing benefit is crucial if only to ensure people wake up to the social costs of these cuts which will affect one million-plus households across the UK. But it should not be surprising that the issue threatening to cause the coalition so much damage is housing-related.

The problem with housing benefit is not just about cuts, Labour was struggling with what to do about the rapidly growing housing benefit bill. The underlying issue is bigger and needs to be faced up to – what do we do about housing?

Back in the 60s millions of people – the country as a whole – was shocked to see the reality of homelessness in the TV drama Cathy Come Home. Today, instead we live in silent resignation with the housing crisis affecting us all: young, old, rich and poor. We are not overrun with rough sleepers but most of us live with worries about housing. Nothing illustrates the problem so well as the reality that house prices are too high but that a drop in house prices immediately signals worries of a double-dip recession.

That’s why I think Labour needs a New Deal for Housing.

What I’m calling for is a proper, radical, rethink of housing policy, from top to bottom. Our policies on housing should represent a vision that speaks to the country as a whole, promises a total transformation in housing and puts power back into the hands of the people. RSLs, council housing, renting, mortgages – the whole paradigm needs shifting.

I know, that sounds daunting. Some will argue that we already have good housing policy but we just lost the ability to put it into practice. But it is no exaggeration to say that last week’s Spending Review threatens to recast attitudes to housing, especially social housing, in this country for a generation. It is because I believe that the map is being fundamentally redrawn that I think a fundamentally different response.

The chancellor’s June attack on housing benefit was followed by last week’s raid on social housing investment and the dismantling of social tenancies which sent shock waves through the whole housing sector. As the IPPR’s Nick Peace recognised pre-Spending Review that these decisions showed that “poor people who need homes are not politically powerful.” But this isn’t and shouldn’t be just about poor people. If ever there was an issue affecting the ‘squeezed middle‘ it is housing.

There is also an important generational aspect to the whole housing mess which will only get worse. Take the latest cut to housing benefit. Whilst London MPs are rightly waking up to crises facing London families, few people have picked up on the consequences for 25-35 year olds. Raising the shared room rate age limit from to 35-years old will save the Treasury £215 million but the horrifyingly the government is now comfortable dictating to young people how they should live. Whether it is right for individuals or not, this government believes all young people under-35 years old on housing benefit should expect to live in shared housing. On the Today programme last week George Osborne was adamant that “for most people under-35, in work, that is what they can afford; they share houses and flats.”

The reality is that ‘most young people’ share homes, whilst enjoyed by some, because there isn’t really any other option.

In social housing too the Spending Review showed more ideology than we should be comfortable with. Islington Councillor James Murray was right to say that 80% of market rents price poor people out of social housing. But worse still, the policies stigmatise people not wealthy enough to demand some choice about something so fundamental as housing.

Those that own their own homes mainly see it as their retirement fund and as a nation we bet our future on the idea that rising house prices would lead to greater wealth overall. And yet if this recession has taught us anything, it should have taught us not to see ever-greater home ownership as the answer. Instead it has left millions of people ‘housing poor’, evermore people fighting for ever fewer social homes, and young people with nowhere left to turn.

Labour’s question to the coalition should be: “Where’s the optimism in that?”

The National Housing Federation recently published a report on the social impact of poor housing in March which put the educational, health and crime costs of poor housing into the tens of billions. For this reason alone housing should have been central to Labour’s first, second and third term in government.

So we need to look to the future. Labour’s new shadow housing minister, Alison Seabeck, knows that we need to get housing right. Here more than anywhere we need the “relief, recovery and reform” and that is why I want to see Labour create a New Deal for Housing. We need housing policy not based on the old ‘shibboleths’, ideologically comfortable for our base but meant for an age long gone, but policy which meets people’s aspirations, embodies our values and truly offers something for everyone.

The alternative in housing is to travel on a entirely of George Osborne’s choosing, unprepared for wherever we’ll eventually end up.