MP calls for emergency housing programme to help families in crisis
Joe Lepper
Friday, May 6, 2011
A housing crisis in the London Borough of Hillingdon has left families living in "developing world conditions", according to the area's MP.
Speaking in a parliamentary debate on social housing Hayes and Harlington MP John McDonnell told MPs that families are coming to his regular surgery "with their children at their ankles, in tears and desperate for a roof over their heads".
He said the borough now has 900 homeless families and 7,600 families on social housing waiting lists.
On average it takes between seven to 10 years before they can secure a council home or social housing placement, he told MPs.
He was specifically critical of the London Borough of Hillingdon’s housing policies, such as using local estate agents to gain private sector rental accommodation for families. "We have discovered that the estate agents it has been using have often used these buy-to-let slum landlords," he said.
McDonnell also believes there is an "informal agreement" in place where estate agents will only seek properties for vulnerable families in the poorer south of the borough, rather than the richer north. This is creating "an apartheid regime," he warned.
He added: "This has resulted in families living in appalling conditions and overcrowding. Some families are living in almost developing world conditions because some of the properties are so poor."
Another concern in Hillingdon is a "planning free-for-all" whereby landlords are erecting "leisure rooms" in their gardens to be rented by families.
McDonnell said: "What is happening is that landlords are constructing these leisure rooms and getting families to live in what are, in effect, garages.
"In some instances we have discovered these places only when the family has turned up to register for council tax and we have found out that they are living in a shed or a garage."
He called for an "emergency housing programme on a scale not seen since the Second World War" and for government to treat the plight of families in Hillingdon and other areas as "as crisis".
McDonnell wants to see an emergency housing purchase programme to buy vacant properties that councils should be managed by small co-operatives in the long term.
During the debate MPs also criticised government plans to allow housing associations to charge up to 80 per cent of the market rental value. Hammersmith MP Andrew Slaughter and Lewisham East MP Heidi Alexander both quoted a report by the housing association Family Mosaic entitled Mirror, signal, manoeuvre: our drive to provide more social housing. This estimates that such a move would increase the housing benefit bill by 151 per cent.
Councillor Ray Puddifoot, leader of Hillingdon Council, said: "Mr McDonnell has little credibility with the council at the best of times but when he uses parliamentary privilege he has none whatsoever. We will not waste time on stunts of this nature."