A few years ago our local Labour council came up with the idea of “stock transfer” i.e. transferring our remaining council housing out of council ownership and control and giving it to a newly formed housing association. The council was bribed and bullied into this by the then Labour government. What the government actually did was mandate a legally binding and expensive program of housing stock renovation, whilst making the money to pay for this available only if the housing was transferred out of council hands.
It was put to a tenants’ vote. The entire council housing payroll was enlisted to sell the idea to us, having been themselves threatened with substantial job losses if the transfer did not take place. We were doorstepped by council staff promoting the idea, bombarded with leaflets supporting the idea, the supposedly “independent” helpline turned out to be funded by the council and staffed by people wholly in favour of the idea. We were promised that rents would increase by no more than they had under the council, with a complex limit on permissible rent increases – inflation + 0.5% plus £2 per week being the absolute maximum. We were promised we would keep our two rent free weeks each year and told we would all receive fabulous new kitchens and bathrooms. We were also repeatedly given vague threats regarding how awful the service was going to become if the transfer did not take place.
I argued against it, contacting councillors myself with my objections, writing to the local Labour party, having an opposing letter published in the local newspaper, deploying all the arguments I could against the transfer amongst the neighbours in my block. I pointed out that notwithstanding promises, past stock transfers elsewhere had resulted in hefty rent increases, poorer local accountability and access, and loss of any power by tenants to influence their landlord directly via the democratic process. I pointed out that going to our councillors about problems would be a waste of time in future because it would be none of their business any more. Our landlord would cease to be democratically accountable to us at all. But all most of my neighbours could see were these new kitchens and bathrooms. People like me were “scaremongers” and “afraid of change”!
When the vote took place, like turkeys voting for Christmas, two thirds of tenants voted in favour of stock transfer. And it brings me no pleasure – since as a tenant I am suffering this as well – to say that many of my objections are being borne out, and other tenants who refused to listen to me at the time are now moaning to me about some of it.
For starters, our rents are increasing by much larger amounts than they did under the council, notwithstanding assurances to the contrary prior to the transfer vote. They have pulled this particular fast one with a typical piece of private sector chicanery: they told us that the service charge component of our rent – which was never actually charged separately but included as an integral part of our rent – was not covered by the rent increase agreement, which of course none of us were told a word about in the run up to the transfer vote. Thus, whilst two thirds or our rent might only be increasing by 5 or 6%, the other third that supposedly covers service charges might increase by 25% or more. This ends up delivering an overall rental increase of some 10% per year, well above what we were promised. My rent is now 20% higher than it was just two years ago! The highest annual rent increase we ever suffered under the council (at least since 1997 when I became a council tenant) was 6%.
Another piece of chicanery was imposed upon us this year regarding our two rent free weeks – one of which was always at the end of December, and the other in early April at the beginning of the new financial year. In spite of the promise that we would keep these, this year our April rent free week was arbitrarily moved from the beginning of the financial year to the end. But instead of us having it one week earlier, we were told it would be 51 weeks later, so that effectively we did not receive a rent free week at all this spring, earlier promises notwithstanding.
And the service cuts in terms of local accountability are already apparent too. My local housing office has closed and we now have to travel much further to speak to anybody about anything. And the contractors employed are no longer obligated to make appointments with tenants regarding any work that needs doing – they now just turn up when they feel like it, and if you are not home because you didn’t know they were coming, tough. This is an obvious inconvenience to the vast majority of us who are not permanently at home 24/7, especially those of us who have jobs to go out to!
And if this is the kind of duplicity and chicanery that supposedly responsible private sector social landlords can get away with, I dread to think what sort of crap goes on in the rest of the private sector. Well actually, I do have some stories to tell regarding my own experiences in the 11 years I spent in the non-social housing private sector, between 1986 and 1997, but that might be best left for another article.
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