Politics
Foreigners, grievances and the real housing scandal
Published 04 June 2007
Britain is going through one of its regular convulsions of anxiety about foreigners. Xenophobia surfaces when people feel vulnerable. People feel vulnerable when there are shortages. In the past, anxiety has been expressed over the jobs market or benefits system. Most "indigenous" citizens, to use Margaret Hodge's phraseology, understand that the UK economy needs more nurses, plumbers, kitchen workers, fruit-pickers. Most are happy to see the economy prosper with the help of hard-working and overqualified incomers, few of whom ever claim benefits (0.7 per cent). But now a new cry has gone out. "They" are stealing our houses.
They are doing nothing of the sort. As Brendan O'Neill reports on page 28, it is hard to find an immigrant leapfrogging into the diminishing pool of public housing. Newcomers tend to share small spaces in overcrowded, privately let flats. A compelling series of reports from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation paints a picture of the lives of new immigrants, who are hard-working, without dependants, often isolated and unaware of their rights. Home Office data on arrivals from EU accession countries provides similarly useful information. This shows, for example, that immigrants make up less than 1 per cent of local authority tenants.
The latest wave of immigration arrives in a Britain experiencing a critical housing shortage. The population is growing faster than it has since the early 1960s but fewer houses are being built. One in seven (1.6 million) children live in bad housing; 1.7 million families are on housing waiting lists; 90,000 families are in temporary accommodation. Without action, the situation will deteriorate further. Every year, some 223,000 new households are formed. Last year, 160,234 new homes were built (277 of these by local authorities). Such statistics speak of a sector shockingly neglected, first by a Conservative government, which all but destroyed the idea of public housing, and then by a Labour administration that has failed to devise policies to address the crisis. When pressed, Labour ministers unconvincingly blame Tory local authorities.
We welcome Gordon Brown's new, if belated, commitment to invest in affordable housing. He will not find it easy. Millions of homeowners have been enriched by a boom that, in large measure, has been fuelled by the shortage of housing stock. In the past five years, homeowners have enjoyed a 78 per cent rise in their asset wealth, totally out of proportion to their earnings.
Brown says he wants a target of 200,000 new homes per year, set for 2016, to be brought forward to as soon as possible. Even so, this constitutes only a slight increase in the number of houses being built. People are plucking figures out of the air. Jon Cruddas, one of the more ambitious of the deputy leadership candidates, talks of "tens of thousands" of new council homes. Although Brown acknowledges that Britain needs good-quality rented accommodation, he has also made clear his admiration for Thatcher's property-owning revolution. A major public housing programme is unlikely. None of these pledges (or are they aspirations?) will keep pace with demand.
In a pamphlet called Rethinking Immigration and Integration, Cruddas, whose Dagenham constituency neighbours Hodge's, offers a considered explanation of why racism, and the BNP, have gained a toehold in this area. Policymakers do not, he argues, understand the demographic changes. They assume a stable population with a static ethnic make-up. Immigrants are attracted to this area because housing, though not cheap, remains the cheapest in London. Even so, wages cannot keep up with house prices and public services are failing to keep up with population expansion. While Labour has succumbed to immigration soundbites that reassure Middle England, the reality in Barking and Dagenham is that a vulnerable population is given insufficient resources to deal with an influx of even poorer people.
In short, the communities asked to accommodate immigrants are the ones least equipped to do so. Unless or until problems such as these are addressed, xenophobia and intolerance will thrive.
Talking about a generation
The citadels of the singles charts are falling to an assault by a most unusual pop group - the Zimmers, a 40-strong ensemble of pensioners with a combined age of more than 3,000.
Such has been the excitement aroused by the band's cover of The Who's "My Generation" that the accompanying video had two million viewings on YouTube before the single was even released. Trips to the US and appearances on chat shows beckon; no wonder a smile appears on the lips of the 90-year-old lead singer, Alf Carretta, when he sings the tune's most famous line, "Hope I die before I get old."
But there may be another reason. For the Zimmers are no mere novelty band. They were put together by a BBC documentary-maker, Tim Samuels, to highlight the isolation and neglect many of the elderly suffer in Britain. One singer said that making the recording had afforded her the first opportunity to leave her tower-block home in three years.
Pop songs have always been a medium for youthful protest - none more so than The Who's 1965 hit - yet these feisty OAPs, many of whom remember the days when bands were known as "popular beat combos", have used the genre to focus attention on an age group whose concerns are in danger of being forgotten.
As The Who's remaining members approach pensionable age, they may have cause to be grateful not to their generation, but to the one above them.
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