Housing and Urban Land Prices

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 8 Gorffennaf 1963.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Laurie Pavitt Mr Laurie Pavitt , Willesden West 12:00, 8 Gorffennaf 1963

I hope that the hon. Member for Stockport, South (Mr. H. Steward) will forgive me if I do not follow him too closely. Since half-past three, I have been prepared to give devastating replies to the hon. Members for Holland with Boston (Sir H. Butcher) and Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) and every other hon. Members opposite, and now, equally, I should like to answer some of the points made by the hon. Member for Stockport, South. Time is short, however, and I will try to concentrate on the problem mainly from a constituency viewpoint.

I agree with the hon. Member for Stockport, South about the importance of the third prong, and I welcome that part of the Joint Parliamentary Secretary's contribution to the debate. The Minister knows that in my constituency we have pioneered the co-operative housing association as one of the means of dealing with out problem. I am surprised, however, that in the White Paper the Minister comes forward, as he has done, with support for the housing association, increasing the original £25 million, but failing still to call into collaboration and consultation the co-operative movement with its 11 million members. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, in Sweden this movement has played an important part in the development of participation by tenants in co-operative housing associations and the British movement has over a hundred years experience of co-operative organisation.

I should like to come down from the national view to the pressing problems which, like my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington (Mr. Parkin), I must approach from the viewpoint of my constituents. In the White Paper, the Minister fails completely to get to grips with the kind of problems that we seek to tackle in the community. Listening to hon. Members opposite, I sometimes wonder whether we live in the same world or even whether the Minister lives in the same world as some of his back benchers, who are obviously also seized of the importance of some of these problems.

The Minister talks of 60,000 slums to be cleared in ten years. The telling part of the White Paper, however, is that his plan will tackle most of the areas"except those with the largest concentrations," which are precisely where the slums exist. Sixty thousand will be a useful contribution, but the estimate which has been made in many quarters in the past few months is nearer to a figure of l¼ million and the position is not static.

The Minister hopes in ten years to make an inroad into the problem, but at the rate at which we are progressing in my constituency, with the number of people on the housing list—which has been revised during the past 12 months to eliminate those who are no longer still in need of housing—it will be not a ten-year programme but a 250-year programme.

In Willesden, we have 4,045 people on the housing list, plus 2,274 on the list for nomination to new towns. Last year, under our points scheme, we were able to rehouse only sixteen families. The Minister knows that this points scheme is a fair method of allocation. Points are awarded for such things as overcrowding, health reasons, residential qualifications and so on. In spite of the fact that we made 357 new houses available to people in my constituency during the twelve months, only 16 from the housing list were satisfied. The reason is that we have a large slum area. We were able to rehouse 267 from the slum clearance scheme, but these people have to be rehoused only at the cost of delaying those who are on the housing list. We also rehoused 74 hardship cases, most of whom had been evicted because of the Rent Act. In my constituency, the local ratepayers have had to find something like £156,000 to buy old property, sometimes dilapidated, and put it into a decent state of repair to cater for people evicted because of the Rent Act. Thus, our 4,045 people on the wating list are being rehoused at the rate of 16 a year.

In these circumstances, some of the complacency shown by the Minister about the housing problem does not strike a chord with me when on a Friday evening, in my waiting room outside my" surgery", man after man and family after family approach me because of their intense housing problems. I should like to draw the Minister's attention to the kind of eviction cases which have to be dealt with. One is a widow aged 84, with a married son and his wife and their son aged four and daughter aged nine. After 24 years at the same address, the family has been evicted. Case number 1247 is of a spinster aged 59, who has been evicted after 17 years at the same address. I could give details of case after case which needs to be rehoused.

In an intervention to my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North, the Minister raised the question of multi-occupation tenancies. I do not quite know what one does in the circumstances of case number 25877 in our housing department's files. On the ground floor in one room there are father and mother who is expecting a child in three or four weeks' time, a son aged 5, a daughter aged 4 years 6 months, another child aged 2; in another room on the ground floor another lady; another gentleman in a back room; seven people upstairs in one room and the two other rooms with one occupant each. It is the sort of cottage which would have sold for £250 before the war. Hon. Members know the sort of thing—two rooms on the ground floor and an extension room, the same upstairs, and a lavatory in the back garden.

The people living there will have to be rehoused, because of statutory over crowding but how can we possibly do it in the circumstances we have in Willesden, in spite of the Housing Association and in spite of the three-pronged attempts?

What we should like to know is, just what is the Minister going to do to prevent evictions? And what does he regard as an exorbitant rent? I had a very courteous letter from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary about a case I referred to him only last week. The tenant concerned is on National Assistance. The rent has gone up to £6 10s. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary pointed out to me that that is six and a half times the gross value at 1956 and, as he also pointed out, the house is over 50 years old. It is in a bad state of repair and not worth any more rent than about £3 10s., which is what the National Assistance Board is prepared to pay. What does my constituent do when National Assistance cannot pay the £6 10s. rent which is demanded and which is six and a half times the gross value in 1956? Yet, obviously, if the tenant is evicted because she cannot pay the rent she goes on to the housing list and once again delays others on the points scheme. I do hope that the Minister will sometime or another just tell us what he thinks is an exorbitant rent for such property in terms of the 1956 gross value because this an acute problem in many areas other than Willesden.

I should like the Minister also to look again at land prices. He will recall that in a previous debate I told him of a portion of land being sold at £112,000 an acre. He may be interested to know that Middlesex County Council has now bought that piece of land. In 1953 during a housing scheme in my constituency land was purchased at £8,079 an acre. Last year a similar area of land in a comparable neighbourhood was at £54,318 per acre. How does one tackle the housing of 4,045 on the list when one has to pay that type of price for land? It is no good the Minister saying that we hope that somehow or another we shall solve the problem, because even with the greater densities, and despite the help the Minister has offered for grant for expensive sites, with land at prices like that we simply cannot cope.

We have already done a lot in Willesden and we are proud of our record. We spent last year something like £1¼ mil- lion of the ratepayers' money on rehousing, repairs, buying land, and housing schemes which include slum and prefab clearance. We accept these responsibilities, but we are getting absolutely no help from the Minister. We have had to buy 11 sites by means of compulsory purchase orders, but the right hon. Gentleman turned down two others we sought and let the sites go for private development. Willesden is close to London. This makes the building of luxury flats the tenants of which commute to the City a profitable business, but that makes it impossible for those on the housing list to be rehoused by the local housing authority.

So, in spite of the fact that we have pioneered a housing association, in spite of the fact that we have done a great deal to encourage owner-occupation and have given 880 mortgages—although we had to stop that for a period because there was not the money available—we are in an impossible situation. We shall be unless the Government helps us to meet it.

When the Joint Parliamentary Secretary and other Gentlemen opposite talk about encouragement of the owner-occupiers, I wonder whether they realise some of the problems which face young couples who do not have enough money to pay heavy mortgages and to meet that big difference between the valuation of the house and the amount which the mortgage society or local authority is prepared to advance. As a result a large deposit has to be found. The young couple are prepared to find it, because both go to work, but then they have a family and the woman can no longer go to work. The family gets into financial difficulties and, as a consequence, a number of human problems arise.

My time is short, but I should have liked very much to have talked a good deal about a number of other important housing matters which affect not only my constituency, but those of many hon. Gentlemen opposite, and certainly constituencies like that of the hon. Member for Stockport, South where there are crowded industrial areas magnets attracting workers without special housing accommodation for them. What we are asking for is less promises and more action, and in this White Paper I can see nothing which will give any hope or comfort to my constituents in the foreseeable future.

It will take 250 years to rehouse those on the housing lists with interest rates as they are, with the possibility of trying to find land where no land exists, and where it does exist, having to pay up to £112,000 per acre for it. The task is so formidable—a word used several times by the Parliamentary Secretary this afternoon—that I cannot see how it can be tackled until this Government departs and we get a Government who are more understanding of the real human and social problems and have less of the statistical doctrinaire approach of the right hon. Gentleman.