A key element in tackling homelessness is the provision of social housing. And a major problem for providers of social housing is that most tenants have the right to buy their homes – often at a generous discount. This may be fine for those individuals, but it does remove social housing units from the overall stock causing massive shortages. This time last year there were more than 1.3 million people on local authority registers – or waiting lists.

Following Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 Housing act, Hastings was forced to transfer all of its council housing stock to the 1066 Housing Association – which later became Optivo and is now subsumed into Southern Housing. Only in the past three years has HBC started to build new ‘council’ houses of its own.

But the right to buy continues to be a major problem for them. Hastings BC’s Housing portfolio holder and Green Party member Glenn Haffenden believes the Labour Government is moving in the right direction: “The government has just closed a consultation on the right to buy and the rumour is that it will be suspended for new build council properties. We’re hoping Angela Rayner will help us out with that … and if that gets agreed then we will be safe with what we were building.”

Another major contributor to the problem of homelessness is insecurity for renters. If a tenancy is ended by a private landlord, it can be extremely difficult to find new accommodation in Hastings [See Page 3). So Cllr Haffenden wants Labour to go further: “Rent controls would be another thing that the government could look at – we could actually have caps on how much landlords can increase rents in an area … and we need to get more grants so that we as a council can actually build more housing ourselves.”

Rent controls and Fair Rent Tribunals were abolished in Britain in 1988, so if those reforms were to go through, they would reverse more than 40 years of housing policy – which many believe has greatly contributed to the current problem of homelessness in Hastings and the country at large.

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https://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/news.jpghttps://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/news.jpgHIPNewsMargaret ThatcherA key element in tackling homelessness is the provision of social housing. And a major problem for providers of social housing is that most tenants have the right to buy their homes – often at a generous discount. This may be fine for those individuals, but it does remove...The Hastings & St Leonards non-profit community newspaper