The Housing Finance Act is an attempt by the ruling class to ameliorate in a new way the problems of social axpenditure and social crisis in the big cities under monopoly capitalism. In order to understand this new turn for the bourgeoisie we should briefly look to the past.
A HISTORICAL NOTE The time of the industrial revolution saw a massive depopulation of the countryside and the crowding together of a mass of péople into rapidly developing factory towns where wage workers were organised in the service of industrial capital.
PERIOD 1 - 1800 - 1848 NO STATE INTERVENTION The organisation of industry under capitalism. was not accompanied by any attempt by the state nationally to organise housing for the thousands of workers uprooted from their rural homes in this way. Instead the period to 1848 saw a rapid worsening of conditions in the developing towns: older residential areas were converted into slums as the well-to-do moved out, and poorly-built houses were erected on a large scale and with no overall planning by individual contractors intent on cheapness and profit.
THE STATE INTERVENES The subsequent intervention of the state in house: building can be characterised broadly by a second and third period, and it is a new fourth period which is heralded by the Housing Finance Act.
PERIOD 2 1848 - 1917 HEALTH LEGISLATION A period chiefly characterised by public health legislation reflecting the concern of the ruling class about the epidemics of ravaging diseases bred in the crowded workers' quarters. The inevitable spreading of infection to the richer parts of town explains how the bourgeoisie then became filled with the spirit of philanthropy and the state attempted to remedy the insanitary conditions. Virtually no state-financed housing in this period, but some individual capitalists needing housing for their workers and realising the advantage to any boss of striking workers if he is also their landlord, built houses for their employees. SO SOmC small "charitable" organisations provided workers' lodging houses.
Demonstration in Preston The Red Mole 2 October 1972 Page 4 CENTRAL STATE AND MUNICIPAL PARTNERSHIP - a marriage with room for initiative by both partners.
class:
of private enterprise in housing; 2. Over & decade of intensified working class struggle; 3. An overwhelmingly successful rent strike in Glasgow 1915.
Money, legal powers and general policy are provided centrally, but the final decisions and initiatives lie chiefly with the local apparatus. The chief theory about the housing problem connected with this period, especially after World War 2, is that the housing problem is simply a housing shortage and is solvable merely by numerically larger building • programmes.
A GROWING PROBLEM TODAY "The situation today is that there is an apparent numerical sufficiency of housing, with 19m. dwellings to go around 18.3m. households."/ However, the housing probiem, far from having disappeared, seems to be intensifying. The spare dwellings are in the wrong places!
There is a permatent and growing social crisis in the major cities. This crisis is reflected in innumerable ways: squatting, the rise of community action groups, the newspaper reports of scores of people, including office workers, sleeping rough in the central London area, the flooding of every social agency from the Citizens Advice Bureau to the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and Her Child with housing enquiries, the calls by the for more homes for workers in inner London, the report of hundreds of men sleeping in a hostel in Westminster which the Times journalist found to be a fire trap; all these are symptoms of a profound crisis in the major urban centres, especially London.
Waiting Lists are growing longer. Camden IN U.K.
Totel Council Private 1967 211,247 204,208 415,455 199,367 226,068 425,835 3S06 192,408 185,917 378,325 1970 187,925 174,342 362,267 1971 168,123 196,313 364,436 From these grows totals, the following has to be subtracted:
For the year 1970 1. The number of dwellings 110,000 1 demolished for slum clearance and road widening.
2. The number of new house- 150,000 holds - people leaving parents to live independently, getting married, etc. 3. The number of dwellings estimated at not demolished as slums but least which nevertheless have become unsuitable for human habitation 100,000 through falling into disrepair or simply being too old.
TOTAL: 360,000 lengthening waiting lists and a crisis of homelessness in the large cities which forces some local councils to lodge their homeless families in hotels and boarding houses, British capitalism can achieve virtually no increase whatsoever in the number of habitable dwellings. HOW DOES THE CRISIS HIT THE RULING CLASS?
The market in land in inner urban areas is putting rents absolutely too high for the lower and average paid workers. But such workers are nevertheless essentially required for work in these areas.
Thus the crisis hits the ruling class through its continuing need in big cities for low paid unskilled labour. This problem is particularly acute in central areas which require armies of dustmen, sweepers, postmen, transport workers catering and other low paid service industry For example, the low paid, restaurant worker, finishing work as he does in the early hours of the morning, must live in the inner city, near his work. He can do this only be squeezing himself and his family into one or two rooms... WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS OPEN TO THE RULING CLASS?
Capitalism must attempt to enable this layer of workers, essential to the life of a city to be able to live where they are required for work.
Rent control was a policy of the past, but after over 25 years of property boom and fortune-making there are influential sections of the ruling class who would be bitterly opposed to any control of or closing down of their arena for profitable business, and who indeed want all remaining controls lifted. This argument also applies to any proposal to nationalise land.
The other option is some form of increased subsidy from the exchequer to provide cheaper dwellings. However, as we have explained before in The Red Mole, increased state expenditure has to be met out of the capitalists' rate of profit, and this, naturally.
they are not keen to accept. Inrleed, in the present period, the whole motivation of the British ruling class is to raise their average rate of profit so as to enter the common market as favourably as possible for British capital.
As shown earlier, the problem is one created by capitalism, but the capitalist class is not prepared to pay for the solution. The Housing Finance Act attempts to find a solution to this problem of capitalism at the expense of sections of the working class.
Four interrelated elements open the door to this solution:
1. The state power of the ruling class nationally.
2. The widely differing rents paid by tenants of different local authorities.
3. The income differential within the working class.
4. The political weakness of the mass organisations of the working class and the left.
If most of a local authority's houses are of an older vintage, with low historic costs, and it will be lower than a council with a high pro- is not building much now, its ayerage rents portion of newer houses, built at higher costs, and which has a heavy construction programme under way. The former type of local authority is characteristically not in the inner city, where continuing crisis has meant higher costs and higher council rents. The imposition of a national rent fixing scheme determined centrally means the flow of funds raised in the latter type of (big city) council. Similarly, a means tested rent rebate scheme conditions the flow of funds raised in the fosm of a rent rebate or allowance. These rebates and allowances both to council and private tenants are financed by the raising of council rents by about El this year and an average of 50p each following year until "fair rent" level is reached. Private landlords of controlled tenants provided their houses are in up-to-date condition, will now also be able to raise their rent to this level by applying to the Rent Officer.
Thus higher paid council tenants, especially in non-major city areas, are paying for the solution chosen by the ruling class for its problems in this field.
The national state power of the ruling class enables it to extend the state apparatus to ma sure, through rigorous means testing, that no one tries to "cheat" the ruling class when applying for a rebate. It also enables the rulin •Naigo Action cartoon class to counteract any possible revolt on t part of workers which might force Labour Councils to refuse to implement the Act.
Thus the government has included in the A number of repressive clauses against local ticians or bureaucrats: in this respect, the power of the District Auditor to surcharge (claim money from) local councillors and officials for any revenue lost by their illeg actions to the account of the local authori not been thought sufficient by Whitehall Secretary of State has been given wide ad powers, the most important of which are:
holding back of central state funds from c ting local authorities, b) the power to app a Housing Commissioner to take over the housing functions of the local council, c)
imposition of a fine of up to £400 on any councillor or local government employee refuses to cooperate with or work under instructions of the Housing Commissione the power of a housing commissioner to This own staff to carry out functions in th of opposition by existing local governme: employees, and to charge their salaries ar expenses to the account of the local auth
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Three elements open up a period of municipal initiative in building housing for the working
1. A growing need for state interveation in housing to ensure some housing provision for the workforce and to ameliorate the chaos
London Chamber of Commerce, the Civil and Public Services Association, and other bodies
Council, for instance, has 250 additional applications per month, but this increasing need is not met by increased house building; on the sontrary, the number of dwellings built, especially council housing, is falling: AVERAGE ANNUAL OUTPUT OF HOUSES