By Liz Davies

At last week’s Labour Party Conference, Lisa Nandy, Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, etc., press-released her speech with, “Housing isn’t a market. It’s a fundamental human right.”

She promised to “mend the deliberate vandalism of our social housing stock”, “restore social housing to the second largest form of tenure” (after owner-occupation, so eclipsing the private rented sector), “rebuild our social housing stock and bring homes back into the ownership of local council and communities”, “with home ownership opened up to millions more” and “for private renters… a powerful new renters charter and a new decent homes standard.”

The National Policy Forum’s document presented to Conference was A Future where Families Come First (although as someone who lives in a non-traditional ‘family’, I really object to the idea that ‘families come first’: does that mean single people come second?). It says: “The commission believes that we need a new generation of genuinely affordable homes and more social homes (in particular council houses) that are accessible to disabled people and that are sustainable… The commission welcomes Labour’s plans to deliver a new housing settlement that will rebalance power between developers and communities. The commission also welcomes commitments to ensure that first time buyers get first dibs on new homes, to tackle unaffordable rents by linking the definition of ‘affordable’ to local wages, and to ban no-fault evictions, ensuring that families have greater security and cannot be evicted without a legitimate reason.”

This is in the context of some surprisingly radical proposals from government. Its White Paper published in June 2022, A Fairer Private Rented Sector, promised to end no fault evictions, to ban “no DSS” discriminatory lettings by private landlords and to set up a Property Portal to regulate landlords.

The government has also committed itself to ending rough sleeping by 2024 and published a new strategy – Ending Rough Sleeping for Good – two days before Liz Truss became Prime Minister. It promises £2 billion of funding to make rough sleeping “rare, brief and non-recurring”. It remains to be seen whether any of these commitments will be implemented by Liz Truss’s government, intent on cutting public services.

It is to be assumed that Labour will support the government on abolishing no fault evictions and ending rough sleeping. Labour could press for measures that will provide more security in the private rented sector including capping or otherwise controlling rents. Sadiq Khan has called for powers to apply rent controls in the private rented sector in London.

Labour could also press for more effective action to tackle homelessness – Scotland abolished the concept of “priority need” in 2012, so that anyone who approaches a council as homeless will receive temporary accommodation and help in finding long-term accommodation. The Welsh Government has just laid regulations providing that rough sleepers will fall within the definition of priority need. Labour should be calling for the government in England to abolish priority need altogether, or at least to include rough sleepers. And Labour should be campaigning to end homelessness overall – not just the visible scandal of rough sleeping but hidden homelessness experienced by those sofa-surfing or living in overcrowded or otherwise unsuitable conditions.

The most significant difference between Labour and the Tories is the emphasis on building more council homes. Labour’s position is really welcome. As Labour Housing Group has pointed out, “solving the housing crisis requires us to build a new generation of genuinely affordable council homes.”

Commentators generally recommend that between 90,000 and 100,000 new council homes need to be built each year to start to solve the housing crisis. It is to be hoped that Lisa Nandy’s mantra of “council housing, council housing, council housing” means those sorts of numbers. To make this promise effective, Labour must abolish right to buy, as has happened in Scotland and Wales.

Lisa Nandy’s “Housing… is a fundamental human right” is a radical and pleasing promise. It is currently short on the detail, no doubt because she is prevented from announcing spending commitments.

A Labour government committed to making sure that housing is a human right would legislate – as a minimum –  so that all possession claims are discretionary (in other words, Courts can consider the tenant’s circumstances as well as the landlord’s) and that everyone who is homeless would be provided with temporary accommodation and an offer of long-term accommodation. Those rights would be underpinned by a supply of affordable, secure and high quality accommodation – best ensured through public ownership – and through access to justice to enforce those rights.

What about now? Arguably there is a public health crisis about to overwhelm us. Evictions are increasing – a combination of the backlog caused by the Covid eviction ban and tenants unable to pay their rents.  Shelter reports that a third of private tenants – almost 2.5 million renters – are either behind or constantly struggling to pay their rent, and the same figure spend at least half their household income on rent.

As the cost of living crisis bites, rent arrears and evictions will soar. All housing and homelessness campaigners argue for immediate increases in welfare benefit. Acorn, the renters’ union, goes further and calls for a rent freeze and an eviction ban. Will Labour – the natural party for tenants – support those demands during this long cold winter?

Liz Davies KC is a barrister specialising in housing and homelessness law. She is co-author of Housing Allocation and Homelessness: Law and Practice (Luba, Davies, Johnston & Buchanan, LexisNexis, 2022) and of the Society for Labour Lawyers’ Proposals for Housing Law Reform (2021). She contributed to Housing is a Human Right (Labour Housing Group and Labour Campaign for Human Rights, 2022).

Image: Lisa Nandy. Author: Rwendland,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.