940,000 homes in the UK are damp and moldy. The current government should take responsibility for the health of this.
It may be the same for many people.In the first few days after the report was released, when Awab Isaac’s Story Coming to the radio, I’m ashamed to say I turned it off. The death of a two year old from mold in his damp home is too sad, too horrific and too maddening to face.
If like me you’re one of those Crowd Awaab’s death may have been particularly unbearable as they made the children sleep in rooms that were cold and damp, with mold and other conditions that endangered their health.
But when I hear Michael Gove grandstanding sky news, brandishing his moral indignation at the failings of bad social landlords, I jumped out of my chair. Here we have the Housing Secretary, a senior government official responsible for making conditions for renters so dire that he blows his tail feathers on national television, portraying himself as their savior.
The shameful failure of Awaab’s social landlord, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, is obvious and irrefutable. Like many housing associations, they appear to have an institutional commitment to ignore tenants when they complain about unsafe housing.
This coroner’s report Inquest into Awaab’s death finds his housing association blames too much of“The reason about the mold is due to the lifestyle of the parents”.
As a private renter, I’m used to being blamed for damp, musty conditions in my home.When mushrooms grew on our walls, my landlord wondered why we didn’t of“Just leave the heat on overnight”. He laughed when I asked him if he could deduct that from our rent.
But Awaab and his family are tenants of social landlords, and as a charity set up for the public good, it certainly shouldn’t ignore the tenants and be stingy at every turn. So what happened to housing associations that put them on a par with the wild west of private rentals?
“Like many housing associations, they appear to have an institutional commitment to ignore tenants when they complain about unsafe housing. “
document leaked to the guardian It suggests Gove’s department, the Department of Housing and Community Improvement, is preparing to formally instruct housing inspectors to check residents’ behavior before ordering landlords to make improvements.The committee will be directed to consider of“Behavioral factors” in the case of damp and mold, such as whether the tenant, through ignorance or of“A stoic” attitude to the cold.
These documents show that the culture of victims blaming tenants for poor conditions in their homes began in our central government.
Since 2010, from Ecstatic regular bonfire Designed to protect and empower tenants to cut government subsidiesIn terms of housing associations, the end goal of this government is to revamp them, starve them of public funding and push them towards private financing to fill the gap.Associations must now attract private lenders by focusing on what industry bigwigs say of“Governance” but really all about reassuring lenders that generating profits is worth more than costly inconveniences like tenants’ safety and well-being.
There is a huge difference between housing associations today between those who desperately stick to their charitable mission and those who threw in the towel long ago, embraced the profit motive, and let standards and services wither on the vine.
gove cut funding to the housing association in Rochdale and pledged to cut building grants for failing social landlords. But that only makes the problem for renters worse.Preventing associations from building social housing will exacerbate our chronic lack of genuinely affordable housing, leaving more people homeless or at the mercy of private landlords who are less willing to maintain decent standard.
Another of Gove’s pledges is to require landlords to relocate people who can produce a doctor’s note linking an illness to their home. If he does a good job at this, it will be welcome. But it is patching the brink of a huge gap in government failure to meet this basic human need, Bridging the 40-year gapand the decisions of this administration have grown deeper and wider.
Have 940,000 households Damp and moldy in England. This administration should take a healthy responsibility for these missteps. A combination of spending cuts, deregulation, and housing privatization has exacerbated the decline in safety and decency to the point that our homes are making us sick and endangered.
We all want to be able to return to a place that is warm, safe and comfortable. Here’s what this administration needs to do to ensure this:
- Quarantine our home. The UK has the airiest homes in Europe. £3.6bn will launch a national emergency home upgrade scheme to lower our bills and keep us warmer this winter. In the medium term, the government should upgrade 19 million homes by 2030, starting with millions of social housing units.
- Give councils and social landlords more money to build and maintain truly affordable homes, and make that money depend on better standards, service and empowerment for tenants.
- Deliver on long-promised laws against unfair evictions and raise standards of decency in the private rental sector.
This government wouldn’t do these things without tremendous pressure from people like us, get organized and take action. For all the grandstanding about Awaab Ishak’s death, this government is not going to give us the homes we need for ourselves and our families unless we fight for them.
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