What should Labour do about housing - and would it be ‘too indulgent’, asks Danny Dorling

London has a housing crisis. Unaffordable rents keep rising; social housing stock keeps shrinking; the enrichment of the already rich goes on, at the expense of the rest of us; uncontrolled gentrification continues to spread; and local governments are unable or unwilling to hold developers to their legal requirements to provide affordable housing.
As party members, renters and experts alike call for housing policies of the kind that are normal elsewhere in Europe and that ensure affordable and safe housing, some in the Labour Party dismiss the very idea as “an indulgence”. But is it?
Geographer, author and inequality expert Professor Danny Dorling (University of Oxford) asks: What happens when a government - as well as an opposition - believes that come what may, “We can't let house prices fall” - and diverts public funds to make sure it's the case? Why has rent control been so unthinkable in England for so long? Why, in the UK, is being a private renter positively correlated with a lower life expectancy - whereas there is no such correlation for those living in social housing?
How have students become a commodity to be farmed, living in en-suite rooms in privately owned buildings with the most expensive toilets they'll ever have in their lives, asks Dorling. Why are some housing associations now built on "slightly dodgy financing” - and could they be reformed? Only 3% of people in the UK are landlords, he notes, and almost none vote Labour. Could saying "housing for all, better quality, lower price" be not only the right thing to do morally, but the right thing to do electorally, especially if Labour wants to avoid the Greens stealing its votes?
Speaking at a 9 December 2023 event in London hosted by the Labour Housing Group, Professor Dorling tackles the matter of Labour's housing policy - and how it must change if inequality is to be tackled, social justice is to be served, and London moves closer to being a liveable and affordable city for the many, not just the plutocratic few.
If Labour really wants to get elected, Professor Dorling adds, “it needs to stop presenting itself as a slightly less unkind version of the Conservative Party".
This is an audio-only recording of Professor Dorling's contribution to a panel that also included:
Peter Apps (author, “Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen”)
John Boughton (social historian and author, “Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing”)
Matthew Pennycook MP - Shadow Minister for Housing & Planning
Karen Buck MP - Labour MP, Westminster North
Miatta Fahnbulleh - Chief Executive, New Economics Foundation
Find out more about Danny Dorling:
www.dannydorling.org
Read about his latest book, Shattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of a Failing State
www.dannydorli...