The appointment of James Cleverley to oppose Angela Rayner as Shadow Housing Minister confirms that, finally, housing has reached near the top of the domestic political agenda and for the first time since the post-war period, the two main parties are going to compete on the housing terrain. Both are doomed to fail. They remain addicted to seeing private developers as the solution to the problem, when in fact, they are the cause.
Three thousand miles away in New York City, a very different approach presents a more optimistic future for housing. Zohran Mamdani’s nomination as the Democratic Party’s candidate in November’s mayoral election was founded on breaking the doom loop of housing misery. Despite the inevitable red-baiting, Mamdani’s housing policies are relatively moderate — though in these days of market-driven housing hegemony, even modest reforms can seem radical. But he has given hope to millions of New Yorkers that they will be able to afford to live in the city they call home.
In the UK, the inability or unwillingness of successive governments to address the underlying causes of housing demand has fuelled the far right. Nigel Farage shamelessly blames immigration for the housing crisis. Shamefully, mainstream politicians, including some from the Labour government, echo him. Another critical lesson from Mamdani’s campaign is that challenging the ruinous domination of corporate private developers punctures racist scapegoating.
I spent a significant chunk of the last four years living in the New York City area and participated in grassroots housing justice campaigns. Mamdani’s ascent was no overnight success. He aligned himself with an energetic, relentless, creative, dynamic style of street-level community politics focused on housing. When protesters blocked roads, opposed evictions, or lobbied the Governor, he was often there. He directly linked his campaign for a more ‘affordable’ city to curbing the ever-rising housing costs for working-class New Yorkers.
In stark contrast, and with some honourable exceptions, politicians over here have failed to recognise the mounting desperation caused by the scarcity of genuinely affordable homes. Instead, there have been policy sticking plasters, particularly around the nebulous and increasingly discredited concept of ‘affordable housing’. Sadly — and dangerously — the current government appears to be repeating this mistake. It continues to dissemble when asked how many of the 1.5 million homes it claims will be built during this parliament will be for social rent.
There is now a growing consensus for a substantial revival of council housing, including among the many local authorities being pushed into bankruptcy by the cost of providing temporary accommodation. Campaigns for private renters share the demand because they recognise that, in many parts of the country, a council tenancy is the only route to a truly affordable rent and a secure home.
Five decades of neoliberalism have transformed the UK housing landscape. Private landlordism has been deliberately promoted as an investment vehicle and has risen in inverse proportion to the decline of council housing. A twenty-first-century generation has been manipulated to see council housing as part of the problem, instead of the solution it was for millions in the twentieth century. A concerted ideological onslaught has promoted the view of housing as a private commodity, not a social asset.
Housing now reaches into almost every aspect of our lives. I sometimes do an exercise with students where I just write ‘HOUSING’ in the middle of a whiteboard and invite them to contribute any other issues they can link to it. Within minutes, this word association sprawls to fill the available space — poverty, climate change, education, pensions, ill-health, relationship breakdown, racism — the housing matrix constricts our lives and society.
Private renting and exorbitant rents have become commonplace in the UK, particularly among young people. It’s a situation familiar to millions of New Yorkers. Mamdani and the coalition around him identified tenants as a critical political constituency.
New York City housing is complex. There are several different forms of tenancy, with different legal rights. Some two million people live in ‘rent-stabilised’ apartments. Ironically, these offer a level of protection that, pending the passing of the Renters Reform Bill in this country, many UK renters would envy. But New Yorkers living with stabilised tenancies have still faced steep rent increases under the current mayor, Eric Adams. Mamdani has promised them a rent freeze. In so doing, he built a bridge to a swathe of rent-burdened voters and adeptly linked unaffordable housing to unaffordable public transport, childcare, and food.
These cost-of-living policies contrasted strongly with Kamala Harris’s sterile 2024 presidential campaign. Mamdani’s popularity is panicking the establishment, which has desperately tried to paint him as a dangerous socialist. But his housing policies are relatively mild reforms to restrain, not replace, the corporate property juggernaut. The promised rent freeze will still leave millions of New Yorkers, including the very poorest, exposed to hyper-exploitation by sometimes brutal private landlords.
Mamdani also appears to be falling into the trap of seeing quasi-privatisation (if there is such a thing) as the solution to the chronic under-funding of New York City’s public housing. His pledge to build 200,000 new homes with the label ‘affordable’ is as potentially misleading in New York City as it is here.
These important policy questions will need to be thrashed out. But Mamdani’s greatest achievement has been to defy the sense that perpetual housing misery is inevitable. A similar feeling infects the UK. The political beneficiaries are the far right, exploiting people’s understandable, but misplaced, anger with politicians who ignore their concerns.
I recently participated in a counter-demonstration against the far right, who were targeting a hotel on the Isle of Dogs, allegedly being used to house asylum seekers. I looked around and saw towers of so-called ‘luxury apartments’ and corporate offices. This is the real ‘invasion’ — the occupation of working-class communities by profiteering property developers, aided and abetted by supine politicians.
These are dangerous times. The UK is at serious risk of an unprecedented swing to the reactionary right, promoted by forces directly linked to the property oligarchs personified by Donald Trump. The more the Labour government panders to them, the more the risk increases. But a new movement is rapidly growing that appears to recognise our homes and communities can’t be left to the whims of the market.
Jeremy Corbyn is one of the few mainstream politicians who has always understood the damage unnecessary housing scarcity is doing to our communities. It’s far too early to assess the possible impact of ‘Your Party’, but it will be limited if it does not prioritise credible alternatives to chronically failing neoliberal housing policy.
Mamdani has demonstrated that housing justice can be at the forefront of restoring social justice. Housing is elemental. It speaks to the kind of society we want to live in: one based on the privatisation of everything, including our minds, or one where we can live free of constant anxiety that our homes, jobs, and environment are precarious.