The mayoral election results are good news for people who like social housing
No, the mayors won't end the housing crisis. But we will get more social rented homes than we would have if they'd lost - and that's as close as we get to good news.
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Do the mayoral elections matter? Understandably, most of the commentary about the victories for Sadiq Khan, Andy Burnham, Richard Parker, Ben Houchen and the rest have been viewed through the lens of ‘what does this mean for a forthcoming general election’.
I don’t have much to add to that conversation (Labour are going to win), but I would make the case that there is a significance to the victories in and of themselves. In particular the three aforementioned Labour victories in regions which contain a shade over a quarter of England’s population should actually be seen as quite a positive story for those who care about social housing.
I’m not going to argue that Khan, Burnham or Parker are radical housing activists in the mode of - say - Barcelona’s recently deposed Ada Colau. Nor am I going to argue that their victories mark a historic turning point in the devastating and worsening housing crisises which haunt all three regions.
In fact, if you were so inclined, you could probably buy me a pint, sit me down and explain to me why the whole charade of mayoral elections is a distraction and that their office, designed as it is to be a vehicle for local economic growth, is much more likely to help maintain the current status quo rather than disrupt it. By the time we got to the second pint, I’d probably either agree with you or change the subject, because this is too tedious a conversation to waste valuable pub time on for a dad of two young kids.
Anyway, my counter argument in a nutshell runs thus:
All three Labour mayors (Parker, Burnham, Khan) have fairly limited powers. The most significant in terms of people’s actual lives are transport policy and (a varying degree) of control over local housing budgets.
Its the latter I care about, mainly because while the left/right divide is often blurred in modern politics, the response of even quite centrist right and left leaning politicians when presented with a big bag of cash for new housing is actually quite stark.
In short, the instinct of almost all right wing politicians is to use the money to get people into home ownership rather than build low-cost rental units.
They will also aim to get the highest overall number of homes from the budget they have, which means spreading grants thinly, leveraging in private finance and which ultimately means the homes which are actually built cost more to make the sums work.
They will then focus their energy on using their powers (and money) to smooth the path to the market for private-led developments - removing planning restraints and investing in infrastructure - in the hope of an the economic boost as private investment rolls in.
You will find a lot of people in the housing industry who agree with this approach (especially the last bit) and it’s probably fair to say that there are times in the cycle and parts of the country where it isn’t a bad move.
The trouble is that time in the cycle we’re at is not now and the parts of the country it might work in are not the West Midlands, Greater Manchester or London where there has been no shortage of private investment over the last two decades, but the problems of startling high levels of homelessness, housing insecurity and unaffordability have only got worse.
Left wing politicians, meanwhile, given a housing budget will generally be content to accept a lower overall volume of housing in order to produce lower rents which are affordable to low income workers or families who need some support from benefits.
They should also be more willing to impose things on the private market ranging from mandatory levels of affordable housing in new developments to full on rent control, which a right wing orthodox position would view as barriers to economic growth.
Burnham, Khan and Parker are all politicians who float somewhere around the centre/centre left of politics depending on the issue and the political expendiency of the moment. But what matters is where this places them on the above question of “how do you deploy your housing budget”.
The good news is that all three have set out relatively ambitious plans for social rented housing.
Khan is the furthest forward in actually doing this. In the circumstances he has faced in terms of available grant and the various economic headwinds he could have done much more to get London’s councils building council housing again.
We are getting a good deal more low cost rental housing than we were previously, and the growth in council housing development is genuinely impressive. He’s also pushing quite a radical (in the current context) policy of allowing councils to directly acquire homes on the open market and turn them into council homes. You would see none of this with a Tory mayor - who would be pushing a lot harder into shared ownership and rent to buy models with the money available to them
It is possible that this progress may yet hit the buffers before many of these homes actually get lived in because a not inconsiderable number of London’s councils are quite close to going bankrupt, but that’s not something Khan could be reasonably blamed for.
He has also not been perfect. In particular, I would argue that he has been far too timid in imposing requirements for affordable housing on private housebuilders. He was first elected in the heady days of 2016 on a pledge that 50% of all housing built in London would be affordable.
He spent his first term and a half saying that achieving this was a “marathon not a sprint”, but now into his third term he is at the embarrassing point in the London marathon when the streets reopen and the ailing fancy dress runners have to start cutting through unsympathetic pedestrians on the pavement. He’s nowhere close to 50%.
A centrally imposed affordable housing target in London would cause a degree of initial chaos, but would have ultimately been reflected in land prices and as such would have functioned as quite a good way of stabilising the destructive speculative house building model which the capital’s developers are hooked on. He should have been a good deal braver in trying to make it happen.
But this doesn’t take away what is his most significant achievement: the one where London boroughs started building council homes again.
Then there is Burnham - who has never yet had the control of housing budgets which Khan enjoys. But he is moving forward. In particular, a push to allow councils to buy up homes from failing private rented landlords and turn them into council housing is genuinely progressive. He also got straight into The Guardian following his re-election saying he wanted to build 10,000 council homes - and with further recent devolution over housing budgets stands a chance.
Parker meanwhile made social rented housing delivery the big dividing line in his battle with Andy Street. I don’t know quite where he is going to go now that he’s actually in power, but given there will be a repeat of last week’s knife edge election in 2028 at a point in the political cycle when people may be a lot more fed up with Labour than they are now, he would be wise to put some money where his mouth has been.
Like Burnham, he also has newly devolved control of housing budgets to do that, and a host of Labour controlled local authorities currently getting hammered by temporary accommodation costs who would be willing allies in a bid to build more social rented housing.
On top of this, you now have three mayors who will be big public figures in the early stages of a new Labour government who are going to have the freedom to argue for changes to housing policy we wouldn’t get from Reeves and Starmer alone.
For example, Khan (and his deputy Tom Copley) will undoubtedly push for the end of Right to Buy. So will Burnham. Khan and Burnham are also on record arguing for rent control.
Of course, there’s political expediency here. Burnham and Khan probably won’t want another term, but will have their eyes on a return to Westminster and a possible shot at eventually replacing the big boss. Differentiating themselves in the minds of Labour voters is a good political move.
But if you’re looking around at Labour’s MP selection wondering where the voices arguing for bigger social housing budgets and a clampdown on private landlords are coming from - well, City Hall, Manchester Town Hall and the West Midlands Combined Authority are probably your best bets.
Anyway - leaving all of this to one side - these three mayors won’t end the housing crisis. They won’t disrupt the broken private house building model, or the ever increasing financialisation of housing. They won’t be able to remake our broken system into something more equitable, end unnecessary homelessness or provide much respite to those who simply do not have any prospect of earning enough to make rent each month.
But they will provide a few thousand (perhaps even tens of thousands) more units of social housing than we would have seen if they had lost their respective elections last week.
That might be a small thing in terms of the bigger picture, but it’s the biggest thing in the world for the families who will ultimately live in them. And that, dear reader, is as close as we get to good news. Cheers.
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