“This should be a defining moment for the housing sector.” So said Coroner Joanne Kearsley as she delivered her verdict on the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak from a respiratory condition caused by mould in his family’s flat in Rochdale.
It may be more than 200 miles away — but is there anyone in London who would disagree with her sentiments?
On the contrary, I’m sure most Londoners would strongly endorse the Coroner’s words, only perhaps adding the qualification that the same thing was said after Grenfell in 2017 and Lakanal in 2009 and yet the tragedies have kept on coming.
To be fair, Ms Kearsley’s careful use of “should be” suggests she has her own doubts over whether Awaab’s death will actually be a catalyst for change. She is not the first Coroner to make recommendations about housing standards. And yet the fact that her words have reverberated throughout the land all week suggests a growing groundswell of support for action.
Unlike transport, the state of housing is a “levelling-up” issue which unites North and South. All parts of England have their own share of the nation’s half a million mouldy homes; and of the one in 10 social-rented homes and one in five private-rented homes which don’t meet the decent homes standard. Whether you live in one of those properties in London or Manchester, it doesn’t matter: you’ll still struggle to hold your landlord to account.
Like so many of life’s other essentials, housing was largely freed from democratic public control in the Eighties and Nineties in line with the mantra that said the market was the answer to everything. Greater deregulation of the housing sector has been the order of the day under all governments.
But, 40 years on, can anyone honestly claim this has made homes better, safer or more affordable? Has it done anything other than empower landlords over tenants and create the conditions for profiteering, cost-cutting and exploitation?
Don’t get me wrong — there are many excellent housing providers in Greater Manchester and Greater London doing great things to support the people and places where they work. But, in my experience, these good landlords are often trying to work around a broken housing market and pick up the pieces behind the bad landlords, particularly in the private-rented sector, who are far too numerous for comfort. And how is the poor renter to have any chance of differentiating good from bad? The lack of simple, strong landlord accreditation schemes means people have no real way of knowing.
I’m sorry to say this but Parliament and all political parties need to accept their share of the blame for leaving renters in this position. For too long, the national debate on housing has been far too focused on owning rather than renting; on the quantity of homes that need to be built rather than the quality of those we have already got.
But perhaps, at last, the debate is shifting. Michael Gove’s strong response to the Coroner’s ruling certainly conveyed the sense that he, at least, is sold on the case for major change. Greater Manchester has been calling for this for a long time and we are further encouraged by a letter from Gove this week suggesting he is open to giving us stronger devolved powers over housing standards, to underpin our Good Landlord Charter, as part of a new devolution deal.
However, the most encouraging sign of all is the fact that the Levelling Up Secretary has put legislative reform firmly back on the agenda with the revival of the Renters’ Reform Bill which was shelved by the Truss regime.
If done properly, this Bill could allow the Government to put real substance behind its “levelling up” claims. But that means widening its scope. On the back of the Coroner’s recommendations, it will need to be about more than reform of the private-rented sector — as necessary as that is — and include stronger protections for social renters too.
I would say it needs to go further still. As Awaab’s tragic death shows, housing is fundamentally a health issue. People cannot have good health and a good life without the foundation of a good home. This is the principle behind the Finnish national policy of ‘Housing First’.
I think it’s time for the UK to adopt something similar. We should make good, safe housing a human right in UK law. Isn’t that, finally, a levelling up campaign that everyone could unite around?
