A former mayoress of Gloucester (1987-88) she resigned from the ruling Conservative Party when she heard about its stock transfer plans. Subsequently, Gloucester Tenants' Federation helped stop the transfer in its tracks.
When I heard the proposal to transfer Gloucester city council housing stock to North Housing Association I was gobsmacked. I thought: "What on earth's going on?" I'd never even heard of large-scale stock transfer and didn't even know we had secure tenancies until we found out they could be taken away from us.
It's up to bolshie tenants like me to say: "There is another alternative to stock transfer and that's staying as a council tenant with a secure tenancy."
I was elected chair of the tenants' federation to look into the details of the transfer. I'd served as the city's mayoress for a year and the mayor, a friend of mine, was the Conservative chairman for housing but he'd never mentioned to me during the whole time that these plans were afoot.
I resigned from the party and we fought a 10-month campaign to stop the stock transfer of around 6000 homes to North Housing Association. Local churches and unions chipped in with the funding.
We weren't actually opposed to North Housing Association. We were just against the council making a decision without consulting tenants and treating the deal as a fait accompli.
The transfer deal was finally scrapped before it got to the ballot stage because of tenant diligence and a hard-fought campaign.
Attempts have been made since 1979 to rid the country of council housing and we're bitterly disappointed with this government for carrying on down the Tory route. They have persistently introduced more nails into the coffin of council housing. The future looks bleak unless the government does something quickly to reinvest in council housing with no strings attached.
Young people have little or no chance of getting a council house; we are seeing waiting lists of up to 70 years in some areas. We are being robbed of all our choices in this quest to sell off council housing.
It's like selling off the family silver.
Mohamed Osman Musani and Nasim Gulam are neighbours on the Havelock estate in Southall, Middlesex. They are members of the Havelock Independent Residents' Organisation, set up in December to campaign against houses being transferred to Presentation Housing Association.
Musani has lived on the estate for 29 years, Gulam for a year.
I like being a council tenant – my secure tenancy is everything to me
Nasim Gulam
Musani has a stroke-related disablity and does not work. Gulam is a full-time mother of Waleed, aged three.
Musani: We want to keep our secure tenancies, simple as that, and that is why we are opposed to stock transfer. HIRO has two main purposes: one, to campaign against the sell-off and two, to give people on the estate an organisation that represents them.
About 400 local people have signed a petition opposing stock transfer which was given to the mayor of Ealing last month [Ealing owns the Havelock estate].
The council says "we are doing what is best for you", but the people are not happy.
Gulam: I like being a council tenant. My secure tenancy is everything to me.
The stock transfer process is very complicated and we see our job as giving local people the knowledge to understand the decisions that are being made about their futures. I joined HIRO because I wanted to know what would happen to our homes. The more I learned about stock transfer, the more I didn't want it to happen on Havelock. I don't think the council tells people their rights, it makes transfer sound like paradise.
Mark Weeks is national coordinator for Defend Council Housing and lives on the Will Crooks estate in Poplar, east London. He has been a council tenant for 21 years.
Defend Council Housing was launched in 1997 to fight transfer on Will Crooks, but has since grown to become the most prominent anti-transfer organisation in the country. Public sector union Unison announced its backing for the campaign this year.
Poplar Harca Housing Association first raised its head on our estate back in 1996. There was talk of transfer and at first I was fooled and even thought "this sounds good".
Then I started reading up on the housing association and discovered that all the money that was promised towards repairs and refurbishment was entirely dependent on bank loans and the private sector. I thought, if we allow this to go ahead we will lose all our rights and no longer have secure tenancies.
News of the tenants' rejection of transfer spread and Defend Council Housing was born in July 1997. In the beginning, things were haphazard. We were overly ambitious, responding to every government policy, spending huge amounts of money on mail-outs and campaigns. It got to the stage where we thought "we have got to be nuts to be doing this".
Housing is slowly working its way up the political agenda. So many people need low rents and landlord accountability. Council housing is a vital safety net and if you take that away – well, I would hate to see the state of London in that eventuality. We can't even house our key workers. And I knew the transfer in Birmingham earlier this year wouldn't go through – there was a feeling on the streets that no one would vote for it.
If people were not so apathetic, you’d have the real seed for a rebellion. A peasants’ revolt
Sister Christine Frost
Council housing is, for me, the best deal. Take away cheap housing and the infrastructure of a city would fall to pieces.
Sister Christine Frost lives on the Will Crooks estate in Poplar, east London, and is secretary and co-founder of South Poplar and Limehouse Action for Secure Housing (SPLASH).
I am opposed to the ending of council housing and opposed to anything that diminishes the stock in terms of social housing. Never before have we needed the "social" housing so much, rather than "affordable". People talk about "affordable" housing but my question is, affordable to whom? In Blackwall, east London, you have a situation where there is real poverty, child poverty, in the shadow of the Canary Wharf bank buildings where millions of pounds are made each day. If people were not quite so apathetic, you'd have the real seed for a rebellion. A peasants' revolt.
No one seems to care. In Blackwall there have been no effects from planning gain. No one has said, here are the fruits of local planning gain, how would you like it spent? The money is not trickling down to the local community. Soon we could have a new term in the English language; housing refugee.
It is as if council members sit around a table and say: "How can we subdue these people living on the estate? I know, we'll abandon them so they'll be grateful for anyone who comes along to rescue them." And the housing association arrives. But a housing association is not a better landlord; its remit is not the same as a council, which has a statutory duty to vulnerable people. Housing associations are not charities.
I say to people: "We don't have to leave our estates, but we have to be accountable to ourselves and hold other people accountable. If we stick together it can be done."
Rob Leadon is a mature student currently on sabbatical leave from a law degree at Birkbeck university. He has lived on the Belle Vue estate in Hendon, north-west London, for 17 years and is a member of the Labour Party.
Leadon is affiliated to Barnet Defend Council Housing and is urging tenants across Barnet to join the "no" campaign to a proposed transfer of 8000 homes.
Transfer is about tenants having a democratic choice to remain council tenants or have a housing association as their landlord, without being railroaded by semantics.
Two years ago I heard that our estate might have a large-scale voluntary stock transfer. I started looking into transfer and housing associations and at the rhetoric employed by local government to sell the idea to tenants. I attended a few conferences and when a regeneration programme started on a particularly troublesome estate in Barnet, I went along to tell the tenants what I had learned and what the risks were.
There is a consultation under way in Barnet at the moment. But it's quasi-consultation because tenants are given two choices: LSVT or arm's-length management organisation. The third choice – to remain a council tenant with a secure tenancy – is never pushed at all. Meanwhile, we don't get our repairs and maintenance done because the money is being spent on consultants. I'm trying to win the hearts and minds of those on the estates, to argue that we don't need transfer, which would mean losing our accountability.
If transfer becomes the norm we will have a poorer society in the long run.
The case for ...
Nigel Minto is a projects manager at the National Housing Federation. He explains why stock transfer works: “Opponents often call stock transfer privatisation but it is not because, unlike private companies, transfer organisations are not-for-profit organisations with a strong sense of social purpose. No staff or board member receives share options, dividends or regular bonuses. And all associations are governed by a comprehensive regulatory regime enforced by the Housing Corporation. “The majority of lettings in transfer organisations are to local authority nominees such as homeless people. Any other lettings go to tenants who are in priority need. “Transfer organisations cannot and have not imposed huge rent increases. They operate within the government’s rent policy of the retail price index plus 0.5%. Also, the government is bringing council and housing association rents into line by 2010. Rents will not be able to rise by more than £2 a week in any year to achieve this restructuring over and above the RPI + 0.5% limit. “With stock transfer, the local authority nominates a third of the board. Another third is made up of tenants, who will effectively have more power than in a local authority context. Nationally more than 30,000 people such as community representatives, councillors, business people and tenants are voluntary board members.”Source
Housing Today
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