Stop telling tenants “success doesn’t live here”

This column has been on my to do list for a long time. I kept thinking “oh, I must write about that next time the right are attacking Bob Crow about living in social housing”. I never thought I’d be writing it under these circumstances. I never thought I’d write it as they attack him on this issue amid a cloud of other – grudging – praise and eulogy.

I didn’t always agree with Bob Crow. But I did admire him. I admired the job he did for his members. But the thing I admired most about him was his staying in his council house. Bob Crow understood the true meaning of social housing. The right hated him for it, but as with so much, the right are wrong.

By all measures, Bob Crow was a very successful man. He rose to the very top of his chosen profession. He stayed there for 12 years until his untimely death. According to some, this success meant that he should have given up his home. Moved away from his community. Left all that behind.

That isn’t how those in any other tenure of housing have their success rewarded. I’ve never heard discussion of how home owners should be forced to trade up once their income reaches an arbitrary level marked out as “success” – despite the massive demand crisis that also occurs in home ownership. If I increase my earnings, should I be forced to give up my Outer London flat for a Central London one to free up the space for those desperate to get on the housing ladder? Move miles from my family?

Of course not, that would be a crazy idea. So why is it any less crazy for those living in social housing?

It isn’t. But there is a tendency from the right to believe they have a right to sit in moral judgement over the lives of those in social housing. Just look at the hideous, misconceived, arbitrary and downright cruel Bedroom Tax. What is that but a moral judgement about a person’s right to occupy space?

And what does this judgement say to those who do live in social housing? It is a simple message “success does not belong here. Success gets out. You are still here. You are a failure. Those you love are failures.”. Imagine growing up hearing that message drilled into you every day. About your parents, your friends, your children.

Supply of social housing is very short. Too much of it has been sold off and not replaced. Too little of it is being built. We face a very real housing crisis. We will solve this crisis not be demonising tenants. Not by forcing those of too little means into more expensive private sector accommodation by grasping at their housing benefit. Not by trying to shame those who achieve financial success out of their own neighbourhoods. We will solve it by building lots and lots of good quality social housing that people want to live in and care for. We will solve it by building neighbourhoods and communities that work. Mixed communities where children grow up with a huge variety of different models of success to emulate.

We will not solve our housing crisis by changing what we mean by social housing. By turning it into short term crisis accommodation. By refusing to allow people to grow roots as they grow in their lives we disconnect them from their sense of place. Which in turn runs down those very places we say we value so greatly, we need absolute control over who gets to live there.

People in social housing have a stability of tenure many of us aspire to. Let us not allow the right to use the politics of envy to denigrate their rights. Let us instead use our understanding of the vital importance of that stability and expand it across tenures.

A real win is celebrating thousands of success stories of those reaching their own personal stars from social housing. A real win is expanding security into the private rented sector. A real win spreads success – it doesn’t punish it.