Actually, the devil made them do it. That is, if you are prepared to recognize the UK’s national government as the devil in question.
Housing Associations began over the last century and even earlier as charities, providing workers with something better than slum accommodations. Over the years, the government recognized the benefit of their work, regularized their precarious charitable existence, and stabilized their income through regular grants. Housing Associations funnelled those grants into management and upkeep of their housing stock, dedicating their work to the health and welfare of their tenants.
But in the late 20th century, neoliberal thought began to fall in line with the idea that the government should not be in the business of building and renting housing. The reasoning was simple. ‘Free enterprise does all that kind of stuff better’.
Housing Association budgets were slashed. To compensate, the government pointed to the the free market and instructed Housing Associations to ‘go get some’ — meaning profits — with which to support management and upkeep of their social housing.
But it takes investment in order to create profit. Giving non-profit Housing Associations a dispensation to set up for-profit enterprises did not hand them the investment cash necessary to sow investment and reap profits. So where does essential cash currently come from? Simple enough. It must be stolen from the tenants, which leads to circumstances today.
Examining the finances of the G15 group of large housing associations has revealed that over the last year they are sitting on surpluses in excess of 4 billion pounds. At the same time their tenants are living in increasingly dire circumstances.
These include the kinds of deteriorating conditions that led to the mould-related death of 2-year-old Awaab Ishak, in spite of fruitless demands by his parents, which were ignored over and over again by their housing association. Needless to say, the shock and outrage at this particular event was joined by the tut-tutting and finger-pointing by the national government, as if they were not principle architects of the situation1.
Read considerably more about how these intolerable social housing circumstances are continuing to play out, in BYLINE TIMES: Social Housing Providers’ Billions in Surpluses as Record Number of Tenants Report Poor Conditions
