An idea for tackling local need for affordable housing

Camden’s Labour administration has proposals for redeveloping the Highgate Newtown Community Centre site. The proposals, released for consultation in July, involve demolishing and rebuilding some of the centre and building substantial private sector housing. The downsides would be closure of a dedicated children's centre and construction of a large 5 storey block of flats, which will overshadow the community centre.

All of the homes are intended to be for private sale; none for the affordable housing so vital with the pay differentials and inequality we have in London. Immediately there will be a tension created between raising funds by selling these homes and having a community centre on site, with a tall building casting a shadow on the reduced courtyard of the Centre and buyers being put off by young people, children etc

So Camden Greens are calling for, not only a careful assessment of need for children's services before a decision is made to lose this dedicated facility and protection of youth services in the area, but also an innovative approach to the housing development.

What we would like to see is this space used for innovative affordable housing which takes from the housing co-op movement and from the history of the nearby Holly Lodge Estate. This would involve space saving apartments, built to a very high standard of design, combined with more communal space, for social activity and some spare rooms for hire for visiting children or grandchildren. This would not only be for older people, but also for others who like to have some support or community activity. This site is ideal as some of the community centre space could be used out of hours. In this way, we could make these homes affordable appealing to those who struggle to live in the area, whilst improving well-being through addressing isolation. Homes would be to live in not for buy to lets, strengthening community and taking away speculation.

This closer community way of life worked well for Holly Lodge Mansions - hugely innovative in its time providing safe supportive housing for women. Once again we need innovation with our ageing population and ever increasing house prices, and I am confident that our many architects can come up with some excellent design.

Budget setting - Camden 2013/14

Tomorrow Camden Council sets its budget for the year to come. The Council is not in an easy position with steep reductions in government funding and difficulties raising funds locally in a fair way because of a Council Tax system that does not reflect differences in wealth across the borough, which sadly was not improved by the last government. Central government cuts do need to be challenged in a united way by local political parties.

However, Camden Greens would have liked to see a much more participatory approach to making decisions on how to use funding we have and to obtain the creative input of residents - NGOs, business, community groups etc. Its important that we work together to think how best to spend money and raise funds even if this is about raising council taxes and charges such as on second cars or for clearing garden waste for bigger homes. We mustn't forget that some can afford to make a bigger contribution and I know some that would be happy to do so.

We would like to see the Council do more to address what we see as the key issues: protecting the vulnerable affected by welfare reform and safeguarding our diverse communities; supporting small business and creating local jobs in Camden, ensuring a sound foundation for a sustainable local economy; and ensuring that Camden plays its part to reduce its carbon emissions, reducing our exposure to higher fuel prices in the future.

In practical terms, the Council could do more to protect the vulnerable from the impacts of welfare reform, more money needs to be set aside for the next couple of years to mitigate the impacts including of lost Council Tax benefit for the poorest, and to go to community centres, luncheon clubs, advice centres and mental health services.

It should develop innovative schemes like setting up a responsible landlord scheme, so that good landlords have fewer voids but in return charge lower rents and increase energy efficiency; a library fund to allow libraries with innovative proposals to come forward and secure some funding; and a small fund to examine the potential for co-housing with more shared space and less individual space combatting isolation whilst addressing our housing shortage.

It should put a greater emphasis on creating local jobs and sustaining our local economy which will bring in more revenue. The Council should take the lead in a street by street insulation scheme seeking to ensure that residents can take advantage of efficiencies of scale, support social enterprises working on draught proofing for example, seek to ensure small businesses get more of the benefits of public procurement, and support a sectoral hub of green businesses like those involved in construction and retrofits. It can also create a culture of pride and creativity in terms of innovation, including through using a Dragon’s Den type competition, a town team fund and in innovation fund, levering in money from others.

In terms of the Council itself, in line with the equalities agenda, pay ratios between the Chief Executive and the lowest paid should be reduced to 8:1 over time. Camden should be an exemplar in terms of equalities. Job shares should be promoted over redundancies, which have been affecting the lower paid the hardest. This means more time for family and lesiure, and avoids the huge personal cost as well as financial costs to the Council of redundancy. There is more to be done and we call on the Labour administration to take on board these proposals.

What next with welfare benefits reform?

On 14th February, I attended one of the most powerful and moving meeting I have been to as a Councillor. It really hit home, to everyone there, what welfare reform will mean for our communities. Thanks to residents groups for organising the event.

As we all know, Camden has for a long time been a vibrant place with a good social mix and strong communities. However, we are now seriously at risk of losing this and ending up with a borough which is the preserve of the wealthy with poorer people pushed further and further out of town. This begins to look fearfully like Paris where the suburbs erupt in violence with unsurprising frequency.

With high property prices and unaffordable rents, this has already begun. Welfare Benefits reform add to this problem, with the cap on universal credit making it unaffordable for those on low incomes and not in social housing. Its not just a question of not getting quite enough housing benefit, but of getting much less than is needed to rent a home in most parts of London. And its not just the 761 families the Council talks about, as its many more people without dependents. On top of this the bedroom tax, reductions in Housing Benefit for people with spare rooms, is likely to push those in social housing out of Camden too, as people with spare rooms who haven’t been able to downsize will be left with unaffordable rents. It’s a half baked policy as those who could downsize like older people are exempt.

So what can be done about this? On the one hand, we must campaign together for a humane benefits system that puts value on community ties, family links and diversity. In the longer run, such policies reduce the burden on the state. On the other we must campaign for stronger regional policies that mean there are both jobs and housing in other cities. And on a local level we must ensure the most vulnerable are protected, even if this means an increase in the Council Tax or charges which impact on those who can afford to pay.

We can also do more to create and free up housing, which means a more humane policy to encourage downsizing, as well as building new affordable housing where it doesn’t reduce the well-being of existing residents. Simply building more and more is also unsustainable. The Council's policy to give people incentives to downsize is a good one, recognising that leaving ones home is rarely a positive experience. But we also need to think about what older people may want. The Greens would like to see Camden Council supporting co-housing arrangements with more shared space including for visiting relations. We also simply need better systems for flat swapping of social housingand stopping the conversion of flats to single homes. This may ameliorate the impacts but will not reduce them sufficiently or soon enough.

So at this moment in time, we also need to protest and push for halting the implementation of the Welfare Reform Act until these issues are addressed, whilst at the same time being clear that at a local level the most vulnerable must be protected.

Drawing on the Olympic Spirit to Tackle the Economic Crisis

The 2012 Olympics have proven a welcome diversion from the real world economic crisis that engulfs us. We celebrate the athletic prowess and mental strength of individuals and teams, that test and challenge themselves and have the determination to keep going to the very end. We work together across world states, in competition but nevertheless together.

After this break, we will need to face the reality once again, and seek to find a way out of the economic crisis. We can learn from the Olympics- with their birthplace in Athens, one of the cities at the heart of the meltdown - that single minded determination to win that gold, but this time not for team GB or team China but for the wider World. We can learn from the Olympic Committee who succeeded in organising this complex international event.

I've been reading the Stiglitz Report (2010) to try and understand the causes as well as the solutions to this financial and worryingly realistic economic crisis - it's well worth reading if you haven't already done so.

The report blames the current crisis not only on poor macroeconomic policy and microeconomic policy, but also dogma in terms of economic theory with seemingly blinkered beliefs in the free market and general liberalisation. This resulted in inadequate regulation, which in turn allowed asset bubbles to develop especially in the property sector. It meant high levels of risk taking through banks which were too big to fail, and the resultant instability we know too well.

In combination, with neoliberal economic policy involving lower taxation on higher earners  and deepening inequality, we also ended up with a problem of weak aggregate demand. The rich spend less of their income than the poor, and this means less consumption to drive the real economy in the absence of easy credit for lower income groups. Not that as a Green I am in favour of out of hand consumerism, but we clearly need to take on board the impacts of changes in income distribution.

And when the financial crisis began, there was a quick downward spiral as the policy response and that of the banks was to stop spending and lending in many countries, exacerbating the downturn. Banks became more cautious about lending once they had their fingers burnt. Governments chose not to spend as much as they should, seeking to free ride on the expenditure of others.

So what is the way out of this mess?  For the longer term, we need to recognise the importance of good regulation, which needs to be fluid and responsive, and reduce the risks of regulatory capture. We could for example ensure that the financial services sector pay for the regulators, and regulator salaries could be linked to salaries in the financial services sector. International regulation is also needed considering the interdependent global system that  now operates.

But its not only about regulation but about restructuring including the separation of vulnerable sectors and diversification rather than the vertically integrated banks we now have. Through restructuring, we can ensure that regulation is appropriate to the risks of different parts of the sector.

The report also emphasises the reform of international institutions so they have greater developing country representation. They need to  lend without imposing conditions that requires public expenditure to be slashed, often pushing countries into a cycle of decline.
A new global institution, not the IMF nor World Bank, is proposed.
It recommends reconsidering capital  markets liberalisation, questioning the extent to which we can allow free currency flows across borders. The risks of instability are too high. Is this the real issue  for countries like Greece, rather than simply being in the Euro?

It opens up the issue of having a new reserve currency because of the instability caused by reliance on the dollar. Countries use dollars as a reserve currency as a result lending to the US at low rates but also pushing up the exchange rate increasing the US current account deficit. The value of their assets are as a result affected by US domestic policy. Countries also hold high levels of reserves to avoid having to rely on the IMF, once again weakening aggregate demand and lending cheaply to the US. Stiglitz puts the argument once again for an international reserve currency - this is not new as it goes back at least as far as the immediate postwar era and the recommendations of JM Keynes.

Of course we also need rescue packages, and the report emphasises the importance of countries acting together: at present individually governments are not taking sufficient action because only some of the expenditure feeds back to their country, so they are inclined to limit their stimulus. As a local councillor, I see this problem even on a local level as councils refuse to take action such as adopting a living wage, and it appears to be because many of the beneficiaries to live outside the area and to by cynical, are not voters. The report also points out that type of stimulus we use can have distributional impacts. So for example quantitative easing which involves buying bonds from existing bondholders tends to favour banks hat hold these bonds. It recommends parliamentary approval for the mechanisms used. Finally, Stiglitz does not overlook the need to safeguard our natural capital, and recommends that the rescue packages are a green stimulus.

And a thought to leave you with: the NYC museum has a banking exhibition at the moment, and interesting to hear abut bank failures of 1937 also caused by excessive risk taking and asset bubbles. We seem to be replicating this 75  years later despite the steps taken at the time to address the highly integrated banks and the limited banks left on wAll Street after mergers and takeovers. So to address this problem, we need real determination to get there this time. Let's take some inspiration this time from the steely determination of our long distance runners, and see things through to the very end. 

The Spirit Level - huge inequality doesn't make us happy!

Last week we had the opportunity to listen to an excellent talk on this book, hosted by the Friends of Highgate Library, by the brother of one of the authors. The case of addressing inequality to achieve real well-being is incredibly powerful. But we need to think how to go about getting change. The Greens have some good policies from reducing pay differentials, paying at lease a Living Wage, and getting more people back in work by investing in homes and infrastructure. We led the way in signing up to the Equality Trust's campaign:

http://www.myfairlondon.org.uk/

Another interesting thesis was the interconnection between the green movement and equality. The speaker argued that an unequal society which fed people's desire to keep up with their neighbours made not only for an unhappy society but for a consumerist society at the expense of protecting our planet for fuutre generations. Generally the Greens argue that if we are to have a greener society we need greater equality in order to share out the limited resources equitably. But here is another reason why we need a more equal society.

Mary Portas - the right thing for our high streets?

Camden's Culture and Environment Scrutiny Committee will be considering this issue on 16th April. Its an opportunity for people to put in deputations and make some suggestions. I am keen on a proper public debate on what we can do for our high streets, followed by some meaningful action!