Thinking about housing

Sensible people sleep in late on weekends, or go out and enjoy themselves. Me and my loyal band of helpers, we spent yesterday and today walking the streets of Newton Heath, Miles Platting and Collyhurst, delivering my election leaflets. Yesterday it was roasting hot, today started off pleasantly cool but it soon started raining. A natural result of holding elections at this time of year, I suppose. At least it wasn't snowing.

We managed to get a lot done, though. We've managed to cover most of Collyhurst South, part of Miles Platting and a big chunk of Newton Heath. Hopefully we'll be able to do the rest by the end of the week.

Mostly we've been doing council estates so far, and talking to local residents, I've been struck yet again by what an awful landlord the council is. They're completely unresponsive to input from their own residents, and it can take years to get even simple repair jobs done. I've moved house several times as an adult and certainly that was my experience as a council tennant. It seems to me that the central problem is that the council is too distant and has too many other responsibilities to do the job properly. There needs to be more local control. Eventually, I would advocate local councils getting out of the housing market altogether, and turning council estates over to whatever local forms of control are preferred by the local residents (housing associations, cooperatives, outright ownership of each individual property by the occupants, whatever). Local solutions to local problems are usually more effective than central planning. One size doesn't fit all. Radical reform isn't going to happen overnight of course, and one thing that might be worth doing in the short term is to give more power to existing tennants' associations - they're already embedded in the local communities, so maybe give them a bit of a budget and let them get on with any small repairs that are needed in their area without having to lobby the council first. Obviously there would have to be safeguards, democratic accountability etc, but it's maybe an idea worth pursuing. I don't claim to be an expert on housing, but the current system's clearly not working the way it should. We need to elect some politicians who are at least open to trying out new ideas.