Hannah Spencer

Britain’s housing crisis did not happen by accident. It is the direct result of political choices that placed profit over people. For decades, Governments have chosen to allow the stock of genuine council housing to decline while expecting the private market to pick up the pieces, and it clearly has not. Across our region of Manchester and Tameside, 3,180 households are in temporary accommodation, including more than 5,000 children. Kids should be thinking about whether they are having their favourite meal for tea, not how they will crowd into accommodation unfit for purpose or facing the prospect of sleeping rough. To pay for temporary accommodation, councils have spent almost £3 billion in the past year, which is a staggering increase of 88% in just five years. That money is going straight into the pockets of private landlords, often to banks and big corporations that call property investments assets rather than homes. I see what that means for people in Gorton, Denton, Abbey Hey, Burnage, Longsight and Levenshulme every single day. I see domestic abuse survivors paying eye-watering private rents while sat on waiting lists, despite being assessed as a priority, hard-working young people giving up on the dream of ever owning a home of their own, and elderly people who know that they will simply not be able to afford their rent once they retire. The Green party is clear: we need a new generation of council housing that matches the scale of the challenge before us. That starts with putting an end to the loss of housing stock. Right to buy has removed hundreds of thousands of homes from the social sector, which are often now being rented out by private landlords. To be clear, I do not blame anyone who has bought their council home. The problem is with the policy that allowed affordable homes to be sold off without replacing them. Protecting existing stock is only part of the answer. Councils have to be given the tools and resources to build their own homes and to purchase privately owned ones. It means making better use of public land and helping councils to acquire the hundreds of thousands of long-term empty homes that should be brought back into public use. The Government can continue to kick the can down the road by spending billions to manage the ever-worsening consequences of the housing crisis, or they can invest in solving it. My message to the Minister is simple: stop the loss of social housing, allow councils to buy homes back into public ownership, build council homes at scale and bring empty homes back into use, introduce rent controls and give councils the powers they need to lead the way. Every family deserves more than a roof over their head. They deserve a place to belong, and council housing remains one of the most effective ways the Government have of making that a reality.