• Steve Revins For young people in Britain, finding adequate housing is a big problem.
You may be stuck in the place to live at all. family home facing all kinds of difficulties unable to move out because of the lack of decent-pay- benefit cuts, ing jobs, henefit restric. tions or meagre grants.
You may nave heer forced out of the "family home" for any number of with a mortgage, there's a reasons, or not have a fair chance "negative eqfamily home at all and be vitv is suttered - the livine in erner insecure. house is worth less than sub-standard private ac- the mortgage which, comcommodation or have no bined with increased job insecurity makes the Students threat of losing your nome Perhaps you're a stu- a very real one. dent facing grant and The Thatcherite "Boom"
forced into of the i lead many the cheapest and prob- people to buy their own ably grottiest private nomes at extremely inrented housing there is. flated prices.
If you live in a household Schemes were created whereby people could buy the council housing they lived in, though now many are left with houses that they can't sell and with mortgages that are more nomes. expensive than their previous rent.
Council housing is virtually impossible to obtain, waiting lists have never neAn longer Sell-off Legislation has meant - that councils have been forced to sell of their should be a basic right housing stock yet they are attordable to all. prevented from using the There is no shortage of money they receive for unemnloved workers to such sales to build more build new homes, nor is there a shortage of empty Despite the obvious fail- housing that could be ures of the "Thatcherite made habitable. Yet there miracles, n pader is an acute housing crisis. Tony Blair is now embrac- Market ing Thatcherism as a This is because of the model upon which to build market system which we his "New Labour". are told is essential to creThe right to a decent, ate a healthy vibrant, socisafe and secure home ety.
The media and the government have been insist ing that the market creates a vibrant economy for over a century now, only all the evidence flies in the face of this argument.
How the "modernisers" of the Labour Party aim to meet the needs of society with a system that has been tried and failed remains a mystery.
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