WHY DOES THE LEFT HATE HOME-OWNERSHIP?

Why does the left hate home-ownership?

‘Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains -- and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labor and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived.’ Winston Churchill, 1909

(http://www.landvaluetax.org/current-affairs-comment/winston-churchill-said-it-all-better-then-we-can.html)

Churchill was referring to land monopolists, not necessarily to the landlords who own people’s flats and homes and collect rents from those individuals in exchange for doing the occasional repair and refraining (if it suits them) from exercising their legal right to throw the tenants out. But the parasitic nature of the activity is the same.

And while the state landlord, which provides ‘social’ housing and is the darling of the left, assumes a more benign role, its power over tenants, to whatever extent that power may or may not be abused, is just as great as that of the private landlord.

Thus, this post is an argument for universal home-ownership as of right, on the principle that adequate housing, which includes security of tenure, is already defined as a human right (see http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FS21_rev_1_Housing_en.pdf; how long any human rights will remain in Britain, even in theory, is another question), and a dwelling that’s owned by someone other than the occupant (whether state or private landlord) cannot provide that security, whatever the lease says.

And I do mean universal. Every individual and every family would own the dwelling they lived in, paying an affordable mortgage until they paid it off and owned the place outright. If they lost their job, became disabled, or otherwise suffered loss of income, the state would cover the mortgage as it now pays housing benefit for rents.

Rentals would be a thing of the past, except in limited numbers for transients such as students or workers on exchange placements, and strictly regulated.

Experience of private rental

Recently I was at a demonstration on behalf of families in Edinburgh who were evicted by private landlords because of the benefits cap, and placed in B&B. This is an atrocity that shouldn’t happen. 

I cared about it partly because I’m in a private rental too, with no security, and like all private tenants I live in fear.

I get a fright whenever I spot a narrow white hand-addressed envelope on the floor under the letter-slot. A year ago an envelope like that contained a letter from the landlady, which began: ‘You have been good tenants …’ (the plural being because my son lives with me to save on rent). My heart stopped; this is it, I thought. It was bound to happen. She wasn’t going to let us stay here forever. Although we’d been there for four years, I hadn’t even hung up all my pictures: why create more packing to do, when any day we might be given the 2 months’ notice we were entitled to?

But the letter went on to explain that, because of various expenses she was facing, she was having to raise the rent from £550 to £600 a month. Could I manage that? she asked. Oh thank God, thank God; she was just raising the rent! Of course I could manage it.

Experience of council rental

Of course, everyone on the left disapproves of the brutal terms of private rentals. But the universally suggested solution, more ‘social’ housing – that is, state-controlled rentals for the poor – is only superficially more secure and comes with its own particular disadvantages, as I know from having lived in it.

Then, too, I felt alarm at the sight of the familiar Housing Department envelope coming through the door. True, it wasn’t as alarming as an envelope from a private landlord, since it was unlikely to contain a threat of eviction unless I was in arrears. But instead of thinking ‘Am I evicted?’ I would think ‘What do they want now? What have I done now? What are they going to do to the place now?’ Regarding tenants as naughty children, social inadequates for whom the council officials were responsible, they were always nagging, never letting you forget that you were in council property, not in your own home. They would remind you of the stair-sweeping rota or complain that the grass wasn’t being cut. One woman had to travel to their office with her young child solely for the purpose of being told off about the latter circumstance. Shortly after I moved in they decided to have the flat completely re-wired at a date of their choosing: days of hammering and drilling from 8 am onwards. I was lucky not to be ill, or caring for a new baby, or sitting exams, or facing a job interview: they still would have gone ahead at the time they had planned.

They can change conditions of tenancy. When I rented my council flat it was agreed that I could let my dogs into the front garden. But at one point I got a letter saying I couldn’t. There had been a change of management and thus a change of conditions. I argued with them and they backed down. But they needn’t have, as they had all the power.

Another time, I got a letter which was sent to everyone in my 6-flat tenement, complaining that the bins hadn’t been put out regularly over a certain period of time. As it happened, I knew beyond any doubt that this was untrue, because I myself had been putting them all out every week during the period in question. (I’m not sure how this situation arose; it was no-one’s fault, and anyway it’s irrelevant.) When I telephoned the council to complain about the false allegation, the woman said airily, ‘Oh, we send those letters to all the tenements.’ Got to keep these people in line; if they haven’t done this particular wrong thing, they’ve probably done something else.       

‘No Ball Games’

These ubiquitous notices announce: these are council properties and we tell the inhabitants what to do. One high-rise block that I saw had a notice over the main door saying ‘Property of X Council’ – as though the inhabitants themselves were council property. During riots a few years ago, councils were evicting relatives of people who had been arrested. One council requires all tenants to either have a job or do unpaid work, or lose their tenancy. Recently it was announced that a certain council was forbidding tenants to smoke even at ‘home’ – though it’s not a home, is it, when the council can do that.

The insulting letter, complaining about ball games and the like, that was hand-delivered to near neighbours of the Grenfell tower the day after the fire, caused outrage mainly because of the timing, but what’s really outrageous, and symptomatic of the status of ‘social’ tenants, is that they routinely get letters like that.

The letter included a threat of ‘legal proceedings that may include possession of the property’, that is, eviction. Home-owners can only be repossessed if they don’t pay the mortgage; the bank doesn’t monitor their behaviour.

You may say that a decent socialist council wouldn’t do such things. But the point is that they could, and that because they could, it’s not your home. Nor, for the same reason, is a ‘social’ rental much more secure in practice than a private one.

Stigma

In the crime novels I read, which like all best-sellers are cultural indicators, the setting often includes a nearby ‘notorious council estate’, a hotbed of drug-dealing and gang warfare, although it will be noted condescendingly that ‘some good people live there’. In one novel a well-to-do woman, asked by police whether her husband is violent, denies it indignantly with the words ‘I’m not a council-house wife!’ Of course the cop informs her that domestic violence knows no class, but the low status of council tenants remains unchallenged.

I’m a passenger in a car with a middle-class woman, an associate in an activity I pursue. We pass a really nice new council estate near where I live, built to replace some high-rises that were recently demolished. Here, instead of flats, the tenants – even single people – all have their own separate little houses with gardens, and the surrounding area is one of grass and trees. I remark ‘Those are nice houses,’ to which she replies, making a face, ‘Yes – it’s the people.’ 

The frequently heard term ‘schemie’ says it all. But you can’t just tell people to change their attitude, because the attitude is based on the official neediness – that is, socio-economic inferiority – of the tenants, who gained their tenancies by having enough ‘points’ of disadvantage. After all, they’re getting ‘subsidized’ housing, not paying their full dues. In an American novel, occupants of one of the ‘projects’ are described, following the indignant observation that they all have Sky TV aerials, as ‘sucking at the federal tit’.  

I realize that, to the unfortunate families stuck in B&B in North Edinburgh, and having to walk the streets during the hours they’re not allowed in, these drawbacks of council housing would seem like pretty small beer. They would consider themselves lucky to have a physically comfortable flat to live in at all. But why is that the best that so many people can aspire to?  

Thatcher’s right-to-buy

This is the main answer to the title question of this post. When people think ‘home-ownership’ they immediately think ‘Thatcher’. Well, let’s look at the right-to-buy program and see the objections to it and consider whether these bad features – where they existed – would have to form part of a policy of universal home-ownership.

(1) The right-to-buy was a departure against a background of assuming that home-ownership is only for some. And it remained only for some. ‘Those who could not afford to exercise it tended to be lone parents, younger tenants, people living on their own, or Thatcherism’s economic losers: the unemployed or low-skilled’ (Andy Beckett in The Guardian, 20 August 2015; https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/aug/26/right-to-buy-margaret-thatcher-david-cameron-housing-crisis). Actually, home-owners are a majority in the UK generally and Scotland in particular: see Trading Economics, http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/home-ownership-rate and http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Housing-Regeneration/TrendTenure

While this is good news for the home-owners, it marks both private and, especially, public renters as a minority of failures. Home-ownership is seen as the condition of a responsible, settled, adult; renting as the reverse.

By definition, a policy of universal home-ownership would not have this feature.

(2) The right-to-buy depleted the housing stock.

No, it depleted the number of council tenancies. The houses were still there, with the same people living in them. The argument cited implies that the houses crumbled to dust as soon as the purchase agreement was signed.

(3) Council house building declined following the right-to-buy.

There was nothing to stop the government building more council houses if it wanted to. And although under my scheme there would be no rentals, public or private (with the limited exception mentioned), there would be nothing to stop the government building as many houses for owner-occupancy as were needed.

(4) Council houses were sold to buy-to-let landlords.

Again, by definition, the landlord class wouldn't exist under a scheme allowing practically no rentals, and those stringently regulated.

(5) It got working-class people into debt.

I've actually seen this ridiculous argument, and want to point out that if you have to rent, you're in lifelong debt to the landlord class (public or private), whoever your landlord is at the moment. The only way to escape it is to leave your dwelling and sleep in the streets so you won't have to rent another place. Otherwise your debt to The Man, unlike a mortgage, can never end until you die and no longer need a roof over your head.

Under my scheme mortgages would be affordable by all, with housing benefit or equivalent available where needed. (Better yet would be a citizen's income that covered housing costs, but that's another issue.)

(6) When a mortgage is paid off, no more money goes to the state.

The solution to this problem is taxation. The state shouldn't balance its budget by demanding rent, which is just extortion backed up by the threat of homelessness.

Ideological left-wing reasons for hostility

But the above arguments cloak a profound emotional disapproval of home-ownership on the part of the left, because of two dirty words in its vocabulary: private and individual.

Private

In the housing context, the left draws no distinction between, on the one hand, the private landlord or capitalist who oppresses others, and the private person or family who want basic things for themselves, such as housing security, or freedom from the state surveillance and control that goes with ‘social’ housing. It’s a case of ‘private-bad, public-good’. And by ‘public’ is meant, in practice, the state. It’s fine for the state to provide genuinely public infrastructure, health care, and education, but it shouldn’t be in a position to make people homeless, which is inevitably the position of anyone, private or public, who owns somebody else’s home.

Individual

The Guardian article cited above describes the right-to-buy as ‘individualistic’:

‘The 1988 survey asked 1,230 buyers why they had bought, and received hard-headed, individualistic, essentially Thatcherite responses: “good financial investment ... the ‘bargain’ which discounts on sales provided ... the sense of security ... of pride ... the freedom to repair or improve ... the desire to have something to leave the family ... to move up the housing ladder ... to increase mobility”’.

Nor, according to this article, does the middle-class left represented by the Guardian distinguish between ‘Thatcherite’ motives such as investment opportunities, pride, or moving up the housing ladder, from non-Thatcherite, reasonable motives which are just dropped into the list in obscure positions: ‘the sense of security’, ‘freedom to repair or improve’.

But for a more direct and unequivocal attack on home-ownership, we must turn to Common Weal.

‘For 40 years Scotland has suffered from “me first” politics – and we all came second. Politics has made a few extremely wealthy and left the rest suffering …’ (http://www.allofusfirst.org/)

Here the greed and selfishness of the ruling class are associated with the individualistic ‘me’ – while the majority, the working class, are described as ‘we all’, ‘the rest’, and (in its web address) ‘allofus’. Both these groups are collections of individuals, each of whom has individual interests, since a collective lacks the consciousness to suffer, be happy, or, thus, to have interests. When we cooperate and help others, we do it as individuals with and for other individuals. Yet Common Weal presents the actual struggle between two groups of individuals – the ruling class which owns and controls all the goods that others need, leading to poverty, low wages, and dole slavery; and ordinary people, who just want enough to have a pleasant life – as a moral struggle between the individual (bad) and the group (good).

Its housing policy reflects this value in various aspects. On the drawbacks of state control of housing, it writes:

‘There have been two problems with public sector housing in the past. One is that they tended to be managed inflexibly by local authorities which were averse to allowing tenants any control over their home. Another more recent problem has been that smaller units of ownership (such as smaller housing associations) have tended to merge into bigger ones which have created ownership models which are too large and commercially focussed with sell-offs and underinvestment common outcomes.

‘To address this, the ownership of housing should be kept in the public sector, with mainly local authorities planning housing supply according to local need. However, the management of housing should be tenant-controlled in small units of local management.’ (‘http://allofusfirst.org/the-key-ideas/housing-for-people-not-the-market/)

So having avoided the dire threat of ‘ownership models’, we will still be subject to the No Ball Games mentality, but this time ‘tenant-controlled’, in other words imposed by our neighbours. It’s true that home-owners may face petty requirements imposed by residents’ associations or planners, but they are still secure in their homes should a conflict arise, whereas ‘social’ tenants, including those under a supposedly more democratic scheme, will always have the insecure status of renters who are being done a favour by being housed and are constantly subject to judgement by the council – or in the Common Weal scheme – by busybody tenants’ association members.

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Common Weal also promises that, under its scheme, ‘Very long-term secure leases will be the norm’. But if you own your home, unless it’s a leasehold arrangement, there is no ‘term’ at all to your right of occupancy. Why should people have an end date set to the home that is the basis of everything else in their lives? Oh, the leftist cries, because otherwise you might be able to pass it on to your children, and that would be Inherited Wealth! No, it would be inherited security, and if, under the scheme I favour, everyone, whatever his/her family situation, were guaranteed a secure, owned home, there would be no special privilege involved in acquiring it from parents. Your children need a home as much as, and no more than, anyone else. The money they save by not having to buy it themselves would be regained by taxation.

To further its preferred housing policy, Common Weal suggests:

‘As part of this process public policy should continually de-emphasise incentives to home ownership … [here are attacks on second homes, speculation and private rentals: policies I agree with]  [t]here are many innovative ways in which our attitude to housing can be changed. For example, mortgage-to-rent deals mean that people who own their homes could convert those homes to being publicly-owned but with reasonable rents and lifelong security of tenure. People who have been incentivised into home ownership which is against their best interests should have an exit option from a bad financial situation.’  

The cruelty and arrogance of these words make my blood boil. ‘[I]ncentives to home ownership’ are seen as artificial, as though there were no natural longing for a secure home of one’s own. And not only do they want to change the system, they want to change ‘our attitude to housing’. We’re not even to be allowed to decide on what we want. They stop short of actually wanting to outlaw home-ownership and force current owners to become council tenants, but they come damn close to it – probably only because an outfit like Common Weal hasn’t the power to do it. And to gain support for such measures, they intend to offer an ‘exit option’ to those who have been ‘incentivised’ – by right-wing tabloids, of course – into owning their homes.

Meanwhile these bad incentives and bad attitudes are presumably to be addressed by re-education programs run by Common Weal, because we mustn’t be allowed to think the wrong things. 

Feasibility

But, you cry, even though it would be nice for everyone to own a home, ‘we’ just can’t afford it. I asked an economist whether, in terms of real wealth rather than fiscal manipulation, it would be possible for everyone to own a home. He pointed out that nearly everyone has a place to live anyway; it would just be a question of changing tenure. Of course, there aren’t enough houses and the government should build more, but that’s a problem under the council-house regime too, so it doesn’t impair the case for universal home-ownership.    

The crash of 2008 was blamed on the banks because they gave ‘subprime’ mortgages to ‘subprime’ people who couldn’t afford them. So the subtext of this account of the crisis is that it’s hopelessly impractical, even disastrous, for poor people to have their own homes. But what about the interest charged by the banks? What about the price of houses, largely determined by the price of land?

In any case, the scheme I favour would not be just for the deserving poor: it would be for everyone, including the lazy, the improvident, and the unemployable, because it’s a human right as absolute as the right to life. Indeed, it wouldn’t be just for the poor whether deserving or not, because that leads to all the oppressive and stigmatizing features of council housing. If some people are deemed too rich as a result of getting affordable homes, there is such a thing as progressive taxation.

A home is an indivisible good: if you’re deprived of money or even food, you may be able to get various amounts of it from various sources; but a home is something that you either have or you don’t. Homelessness destroys life in all but the meagre physical sense. Without a home there’s no job or business, no family or social life, no personal identity.

Because of this a home, like an income, should be seen as a human right: and no rental, public or private, on however supposedly favourable terms, can ever be a home.