Housing for All

Britain's housing crisis is a national emergency. If you want to know what a housing crisis means, it's when a person can't find a place to live that has decent conditions, secure tenure, is sufficiently near work and is affordable.

For CWU members, the housing crisis is real and urgent

 

A crisis becomes a reality 

For one person or for a family, that's a crisis. But it's now a reality for millions of people. People are living in substandard bedsits because that's the only way they can afford to be near work. People are trying to raise their children without knowing when they'll next have to move house or change schools. People are living in degrading conditions for fear of eviction if they complain. People are spending upwards of 40 per cent of their incomes on rent. 

Addressing the crisis 

Ending the housing crisis isn't difficult but it requires serious steps to be taken. There are only three prerequisites to creating a sustainable, beneficial housing market; regulation, investment, and the end of the nation's addiction to capital gain. But to deliver these steps we also need political leadership, which in housing has been absent for decades.

 

Enough is enough! 

 

For CWU members, the housing crisis is real and urgent. That's why we are working with like-minded organisations to end the housing crisis. Together with Generation Rent, the TUC, Defend Council Housing, and Karen Buck MP we say enough is enough, no more excuses.

This is a campaign that will not be won in six months or even in the lifetime of this Parliament. But we can change the story. We can replace the language of "can't do, won't do" to something much more positive. Towards solutions, not problems.

Take action now 

There are three things that you can do today to make your voice heard:

1. Share your housing stories with us by completing this short survey or tweet us @CWUnewsusing #H4A.

2. Sign the TUC's Housing Charter and ask your colleagues friends and family to do so too

3. Lobby your MP to support Karen Buck's "Homes (Fit For human Habitation) Bill" when it receives its second reading in the House of Commons on 16 October. (Don't know who your MP is? Use https://www.writetothem.com to find out). 

CWU general secretary Dave Ward signs the TUC Housing Charter

 

 

What we're calling for:

• Increasing investment in genuinely affordable housing

• Affordable housing for families and workers on low income

• Bringing down the costs of renting

• A national landlord register

• Increase security and quality of tenancy and an end to no-fault evictions

• Lifting the restrictions on local government preventing council house building and working with other social landlords to increase the stock of affordable housing available

• Maintain existing social/council housing stock by limiting the right to buy

These objectives can be underpinned by determined government action on:

• Uniform minimum standards for accommodation and support for the Homes (Fit For human Habitation) Bill

• Fine landlords who breach standards in order to properly fund enforcement

• Banking regulation to make "Buy-to-Let" mortgages less attractive

• Extending consumer protection rights to accommodation, renters and mortgage payers

• Creating a Housing infrastructure investment Bank

• Increase Housing grants and change distribution to favour who can produce most homes at least cost

• Promoting Community led redevelopment and other reforms to planning regulations

• Creating a Secretary of State for Housing

• Using taxation to encourage a "buy to live not buy to let" housing market