those on the waiting lists.
By Jeff Richards and Geoffrey Sheridan The offer sounds attractive.
Why pay reat forever with nothing to show for it, and a lown hall bureaucrat telling you what colour to paint your front door?
Much better, say the Tories, to give tenants the chance to buy at discounts of from 33 to 50 per cent. That way, they claim, ratepayers and taxpayers will save too as subsidies are cut.
But sales will make things worse for those who afford to buy. The best homes WITH ICE CHEESE means the houses with gardens, which cost less to maintain and where the rents have long since covered the cost of building.
This will put up the rents on newct properties, where ten ants will have to meel more of the costs themselves, Interest payments to money-lenders on the money borrowed to build a new house or flat can casily cometo over E30 a week.
Councils will be left with the poorest properties and council housing will be stigmatised as "welfare housing'.
With the best properties sold off, there will not even be the hopeof a transfer The supposed savings coul be an illusion too, when tax rebel on morgages is taken would find themselves saddied with bigger expenses than they expected, when the cost of doing their own repairs is taken The Tory sales scheme is a device to set council tenants against each other. pitting those who want and can afford to buy Daainst the test, against those in niced: million households waiting lists, the three million houscholds sub-standard housing, and the record 50,000 families year becoming homeless.
libe Tories did win votes on this issue, it was because the Labour leadership could offer no alternative except more of the rents, bureaucratic town-hail management.
The number of council houses started last year - only 68,000 in England — was the lowest since the war, Existing houses are decaying into slums at a laster rate than they are being repaired, Yet the outgoing Labour sliced housing spending by 19 percent in its term of office — more than any other item of public spending.
And its housing Green Paper suppested that new investment in housing would fall hy a lurther third up to 1986.
Meanwhile the fianciers and money-lenders continue to collect £2,000 million and more cach year in interest on the B800E2 burrowed build council housing in che past.
At the same time there are over 300,000 building workers out of a job, land lies idle in the SALES of council houses, already introduced by Tory-led councils, will be further encouraged by the new government, which is likely to put financial pressure on all councils to carry out this measure. The Tories no doubt believe these plans were a vote winner. But their offer means soaring rents for remaining tenants, and even less hope of a home for inner cilies, and the brick makers nave though unused bricks stockmiied to bund tem The Tories" plans for cuts in government undoubtedly trim house building even further departments - already pursued by Tory councils -further lengthen the queues.
If the banks and finance houses were taken over and the outstanding debt can"t money could be made available for a crash programme of housing to let at cheap rents. With public ownership of the land and the building industry workers control could soon solve the housing problem" which is in tact a problem of rent, interest and profit.
And those who still want to own their own homes could do so. without being in debt all their lives to building societies.
Bur the local
ushering in Labour councils in many arcas, has set the sone controntation local and central government. Notth east Derbyshire coun cil, which includes Clay Cross, imposed a ban on council house sales within hours of Labour raining control.
Labour leader of CUUREULLELCE applications on his desk to buy council house refused, The Tory government intends to introduce a Housing Bill which, according to thei election promise, will give all council tenants the legal right to buy their home, and is likely to back this up by the bousing subsidies to councils the that decline to oblige.
In short, the Tories will not be sopped withour collective resistance.
It was the councillors of Clay Cross during the possibility of resisting the fiats when relused to implement increases and mobilised support of working people for their position.
With directly employed buil ding workers in the firing line, Labour councillors would have difficulty in support among their employees for against the Tories But Labour councils cannot be depended on to initiate a struggle against the wholesale disposal of council homes.
Their performance under the Labour government implementing cuts, opposing the council workers" pay claim, and hiking accustomed them to the tune piped from Westinster and the City.
So the labour movement and community should waste no time in starting the lightback on the housing front, and within that socialist answers to the Tories" policies will need to be spelt out. spending will council will dole cancelled, Tollenham beiween HOUSING in Wonderland. Not satisfied with selling off existing council houses, the Tory-controlled Greater London Council has built some 350 homes for sale on the Ferry Lane estate In •and most have remained empty for up to two years.
That's why they've been occupied by Housing Action, which is STOP THE INE HOMELESS HOUSE sells. OF COUNCIL HOUSES demanding the empty homes be made avallable to those on the housing waiting list, und all sales be stopped immediately. The houses are on sale for £19,750 upwards, which means an income of at least £6,400 a year to purchase them on a morgage. and even then the GIC loses well over £10,000 on each house it