Jennie Bailey

SAFE AS HOUSING?

Credit crunch, recession, financial apocalypse of doom – call it what you want. Whilst it’s exciting that shinin’, high-risin’ yuppie flats are being left empty courtesy of the recession, is the future now bright with a plethora of posh squats?

Way back in 2005 as a brand new, bright-eyed Corporate Watcher, I had my first imminent-economic-downturn conversation over biscuits and soya-milky tea. Corporate Watch has been expecting the financial collapse of doom for years. Now that it’s hit, we’re only half admiring the view from our moral high-ground.

The economy has gone on a massive Class A-sized downer with traders sobbing into their Armani sleeves - this part we’re quite happy about. But you can probably guess that it’s neither traders, nor bankers who will suffer most as a consequence of years of corporate greed.

According to various reports, repossessions are up by 71% and it is, yet again, the most vulnerable who are hardest hit. According to the UK Coalition against Poverty, “one in five people live in poverty in the UK”. Crucially, due to cuts in social and council housing, increasing numbers of people are vulnerable to repossessions and evictions, because they have mortgages or are renting from private companies or landlords.

The government and private sector want you to believe that the answer lies in building more ‘affordable’ housing – on both brown field sites and the green belt. The Housing Corporation, a private body that works closely with local and national government, believes the answer to low-cost living is through “pioneering public-private partnerships like no other sector”. Jon Rouse, the chief executive of The Housing Corporation wrote in a report by the centre-right Smith Institute, “There is now around £27 billion of private sector investment in housing association stock…[the] National Affordable Housing Programme for 2006-08 [will be allocated] almost £4 billion of public resources…and 84,000 new homes will be delivered. …For the first time, private developers will be participating alongside housing associations as partners delivering affordable homes.”

The answer does not lie in private control, nor does it clearly lie in state control (the traditional ‘public sector’). The public versus private debate is, in truth, simplistically polarised and rather tired. Private organisations argue that they promote flexibility and an end to the paper-pushing bureaucracy it caricatures as synonymous with the state. Those in the public corner argue against the lack of accountability and transparency, and the fact that if a venture is no longer financially viable companies are always able to pull out, leading to a system that is highly unstable and placing the most vulnerable people in society at risk. At core, a company’s legal obligation to prioritise profit for its shareholders also means that its operations will undermine the social benefits of a project whenever they conflict with profit-making, as they all too frequently do in the provision of basic services.

However, the solution to the over-dependence on the private sector should not be assumed to be over-dependence on the state, whose priorities are to bail out the private sector and whose accountability and responsiveness to public pressure leaves so much to be desired. Council and social housing are helpful, but are not a panacea; there is another way, indeed many other ways.

The current anti-privatisation debate which focuses on trying to maintain the status quo needs to be shifted. There are viable and practical alternatives to privatisation around the world where values of equal access for all, mutual aid, co-operation, and democratic participation are instilled. Many are also relatively cheap or free. These schemes work because they are based on values of co-operation, sustainability, democratic participation and because they value people not profit.

In the UK, there are co-operative housing bodies that are based on values of community solidarity. For example, ‘Radical Routes’, a network of worker and housing co-ops underpinned by anarchist/autonomist thought and principles. Less radical, but with a bottom-up ethos, is ‘Homes 4 Change’, a purpose-built housing co-op in Wythenshawe, one of Europe’s largest housing estates, located in Manchester.

Of course, we cannot see housing in isolation. Another example of working together within our communities was reported by Red Pepper in 2007: “In Spain 5.2% of the population live in municipalities using participatory budgeting, this is a way of devolving monetary control from the state to a community level: deciding where spending is most needed.” Schemes such as participatory budgeting, credit unions and local exchange trade schemes go beyond what is traditionally acknowledged as being part of the “welfare state” and instead create autonomous basic services which are accessible to all, the “welfare commons”. This isn’t utopian idealism; it is about re-connecting with our communities.

So, maybe with the lack of buyers for shiny flats there will be a ‘Squatters’ Paradise’, and maybe we will see the rise of cooperative housing. Maybe, just maybe, this crisis will set the scene for a dramatic change in how we imagine our basic needs, such as housing, could be provided. If so, this could mark the beginning of fundamental changes to the current corporate dominated, and state protected, capitalist system.

In 2009, Corporate Watch will be launching a website with information and resources to support community campaigners in the UK. We’d like to know your views on, and invite your contributions, to this project. Do get in touch at mail(at)corporatewatch.org

Further links:

Radical Routes: www.radicalroutes.org.uk
Advisory Service for Squatters: www.squatter.org.uk/
Squat!Net: www.squat.net/
UK Squatting Archive: www.wussu.com/squatting/#links