Four years ago, Londoners ranked housing as the fourth most important political issue facing the capital, behind terrorism, immigration and health. Ahead of the 2016 mayoral elections, housing was bumped up: 56% of people polled said it was the most pressing concern in London.
Nearly everyone now accepts that we are in the midst of a housing crisis. As a result, the London mayoral campaign became the housing campaign – each of the main candidates was keen to relay their housing policies, from building to rent regulation and landlord licensing, above all other policies. It was clear that a candidate without a solution to the millions of Londoners in precarious housing, struggling to buy, or trapped in a house with a poor landlord, stood no chance of winning.
Renting, social housing and owner occupation were all high up on nearly every candidate’s agenda, with the need to protect renters from rapacious estate agents fees and build more to meet demand emphasised over and over again.
As Boris Johnson ends his tenure in City Hall, Sadiq Khan takes the baton. His promise to start a letting agent from City Hall is ambitious, and his focus on affordability will please many. But obstacles remain; in particular, high land-values in London, and the people sitting in Westminster just across the river from City Hall. Few people predicted a Conservative majority in 2015 and even fewer could have foreseen the calamitous housing bill. Pre-election campaigning focused on the cost of living and the economy, rather than the fact that increasing numbers of people either couldn’t house themselves at all, or felt they were trapped in substandard housing with no realistic chance of moving.
Goldsmith’s campaign lost its way, not just because of racist and dirty dog-whistle tactics, but also because he and the Conservatives have no convincing answer to the crisis. Goldsmith’s solution to the housing problem in London was the model favoured by Create Streets, an arm of the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange, that proposes “estate regeneration” – invariably a codeword for social cleansing in London council estates. Many people, from the Heygate and Aylesbury estate or West Hendon and Woodberry Down, have been forced from their homes under the mantle of regeneration, essentially priced out of homes they have lived in for decades, to make way for wealthier occupants.
To solve the housing crisis in London, Khan will have to tackle the problem of rents but also defend and develop social housing, without which, London’s social mix is threatened with extinction. A city cannot exist purely for the very wealthy: transport, health and basic infrastructure are staffed by people on low- to middle-incomes and will collapse if workers can’t live in the city in which they are employed.
But Khan’s challenge has two complicating factors: while working under a Conservative government intent on hastening the demise of social housing as we know it, trying to fight back against central government policies will continue to be difficult. Even Boris Johnson complained about the effects of the coalition’s housing policy on the capital. But money also talks, and Khan has been criticised before for accepting donations from property developers and estate agents while also decrying the hold developers have over the capital. Few people give gifts, let alone money, without expecting some kind of return on investment.
Overturning a Conservative majority in the mayoral election has shown how seriously voters now take housing. Khan is in a strong position to try to force the government to take housing security, demand and affordability more seriously. But he has an uphill struggle between now and 2020, when the mayoral election will coincide with the next general election. With some bold and inventive decisions, he could make a real difference, but he’ll have to decide whether to side with residents or developers.
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