{"id":13640,"date":"2013-09-12T06:28:03","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T06:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/?p=13640"},"modified":"2025-11-25T09:01:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:01:58","slug":"un-report-on-uk-housing-rachel-rolnik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/?p=13640","title":{"rendered":"UN Report on UK Housing – Raquel Rolnik"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE:\u00a0<\/strong>The report has now been released<\/a>\u00a0or download it directly here<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

“The right to housing is not about a roof anywhere, at any cost, without any social ties.\u00a0It is not about reshuffling people according to a snapshot of the number of bedrooms at\u00a0a given night.\u00a0It is about enabling environments for people to maintain their family and\u00a0community bonds, their local schools, work places and health services allowing them to\u00a0exercise all other rights, like education, work, food or health.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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This ought to be burned into the front door of\u00a0the\u00a0<\/a>Government department responsible for housing, with a blowtorch, in order to remind them every day as they come to work of their responsibility to all the residents of the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I have read the press release in full. \u00a0It doesn’t make for pleasant reading, not if you care about UK housing. It’s not very long and I recommend you read it if you are interested in the provision of housing for everyone, not just would be owner occupiers, in the UK.<\/p>\n

A few key phrases jumped out at me and these I have quoted below:-<\/p>\n

“The assessment includes\u00a0legislation and policy frameworks as well as the consideration of concrete outcomes\u00a0from those policies, examining how they respond to the housing needs of women, men\u00a0and children, with a particular focus on those most vulnerable and disenfranchised.”<\/p>\n

“Housing deprivation is worsening in the\u00a0United Kingdom. Increasingly, people appear to be facing difficulties to accessing\u00a0adequate, affordable, well located and secure housing.”<\/p>\n

“The numbers of people on\u00a0waiting lists for social housing have risen, with reports indicating waits of several years\u00a0to obtain a suitable house.”<\/p>\n

“However, the pressing need for new and more social housing is not\u00a0being met, and the social housing stock that was transferred to residents through the\u00a0Right to Buy scheme appears not to have been proportionally replaced.”<\/p>\n

“Of the many testimonies I have heard, let me say that I have been deeply touched by persons with physical and mental disabilities who have felt targeted instead of protected; of the grandmothers who are carers of their children and grandchildren but are now feeling they are forced to move away from their life-long homes due to a spare bedroom or to run the risk of facing arrears; of the single parents who will not have space for their children when they come to visit; of the many people who are increasingly having to choose between food and paying the [bedroom tax] penalty.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some people have written a lot of unpleasant things about the 1970s, mostly Dominic Sandbrook who didn’t even live through them as an adult, but I can assure you that if we had the choice to somehow return to the housing situation of the 1970s in a flash, when over 30% of people were in council housing, and happy to be so, then the temptation would be great. I can assure you that it *was* better then, in housing terms.<\/p>\n

Full statement<\/a><\/p>\n

I look forward to reading the full report when it is published next year in March.<\/p>\n

You can watch her talking about the global housing crisis on Vimeo here:-<\/p>\n

https:\/\/vimeo.com\/54034574<\/a>\u00a0at 1hour 2minutes in.<\/p>\n

with thanks to Tom Slater<\/a> who tweeted the link<\/p>\n

The document to which she refers in her talk can be read here:-<\/p>\n

Housing – Enabling markets to work<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Austin Clegg\u00a0|\u00a011 September 2013 3:45 pm<\/p>\n

@ Ralph Kent- Absolutely spot on. This is all on top of the imbecilic decision to sell off the council housing stock and the lack of any proper government investment in housing for the poor.<\/p>\n

un-expert-attacks-britains-approach-to-affordable-housing\/5060491.article<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just register with Building Design online to read the above article, you don’t have to subscribe.<\/p>\n

The comments by Grant Shapps quoted at the end of the BD article are disgraceful but unsurprising coming from a member of the political party that rolled out right to buy on a large scale and largely destroyed the council housing provision of the 1970s while enabling a fortunate few to become wealthy as a result of buying elsewhere and letting out their former council property.<\/p>\n

\n

Patrick Butler of the\u00a0Guardian has responded here:-<\/p>\n

UK housing inadequate says UN envoy Rolnik bedroom tax<\/a><\/p>\n

Inside Housing<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.insidehousing.co.uk\/home\/home\/un-expert-says-uk-government-most-aggressive-in-11-missions-37036<\/a><\/p>\n

Old link<\/p>\n

un-expert-says-uk-government-most-aggressive-in-11-missions\/6528551.article<\/p>\n

\n

Filthy British Press and one MP<\/strong><\/p>\n

Daily Express<\/p>\n

How-dare-this-idiot-preach-at-Britain-on-human-rights<\/a><\/p>\n

Daily Mail<\/p>\n

Raquel-Rolnik-A-dabbler-witchcraft-offered-animal-sacrifice-Marx.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Tory MP Stewart Jackson said Rolnik was a “loopy Brazilian leftie with no evidence masquerading as a serious UN official”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE:\u00a0The report has now been released\u00a0or download it directly here “The right to housing is not about a roof anywhere, at any cost, without any social ties.\u00a0It is not about reshuffling people according to a snapshot of the number of bedrooms at\u00a0a given night.\u00a0It is about enabling environments for people to maintain their family and\u00a0community […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6,15,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-estates-under-threat","category-politics","category-right-to-buy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13640"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30278,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13640\/revisions\/30278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/singleaspect.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}