New report urges Labour to place human rights at centre of housing policy offer

A new report has urged the Labour Party to place human rights at the centre of its housing policy offer and to focus on securing “decent, safe and stable homes for all” amid the UK’s ongoing housing crisis.

The Labour Housing Group (LHG) and the Labour Campaign for Human Rights (LCHR) have published a joint report, entitled Housing is a Human Right.

With 16 new essays from housing and human rights academics and practitioners, the paper seeks to present homelessness and inadequate housing “not merely as social problems, but as violations of our most fundamental human rights”.

Shadow housing minister Matthew Pennycook writes in the foreword to the report: “If the right to adequate housing were taken seriously, there wouldn’t be families living in sub-standard temporary accommodation; social tenants forced to live in squalid conditions; and growing numbers of people without a home of any kind.”

Pennycook describes the document as a “timely clarion call to the labour movement” and argues that the Labour Party can “draw extensively” on the ideas set out in it to make “decisive progress” on tackling the housing crisis.

Other contributors to the report include Labour MP for Westminster North Karen Buck, Labour peer Alicia Kennedy and Labour MSP for Central Scotland Mark Griffin.

The essay by Generation Rent director Baroness Kennedy, calls for action to end the insecurity faced by tenants as a result of ‘no-fault’ or ‘revenge’ evictions. Karen Buck uses her essay to highlight how around one in four private homes are ‘non-decent’.

London Assembly Member Sem Moema endorses Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s plan for an independent Private Sector Rent Commission to create and enforce measures to reduce rents and keep them at lower levels, a measure she argues would be “life-changing”.

Commenting on the report, LHG secretary Sheila Spencer said: “We argue that the principles of human rights law should be applied to housing and become a tool for transforming peoples’ lives.” She expressed hope that Labour would adopt the framework for the next election.

LCHR director Matthew Turner said: “While the last Labour government adopted strong legislation to defend our civil and political rights, our human rights to health, food or indeed housing remain unprotected. It is one of the key reasons why the country faces an unprecedented crisis of unaffordable and unsafe homes.”

Lucy Powell used her Labour conference 2021 speech, while serving as Shadow Housing Secretary, to back policies to make housing a human right, end rough sleeping, end no-fault evictions and end “the huge net loss in council houses resulting from Right to Buy and its huge discount”.

She specifically said Labour would establish a new Building Works Agency to assess, fix, fund, certify all tall buildings and pursue those responsible for costs, and introduce legislation to ensure leaseholders do not pay the costs.

The Labour frontbencher also promised to implement a “massive increase in council and social homes, fit for all ages” and to give local authorities “new powers to buy and develop land for housing, and revitalise town centres, by reforming arcane compensation rules”.