The `colourful’ councillor and Birmingham’s squatters

Campaigners for more affordable homes in the group `Justice For Crisis’ (JfC) recently set up a ‘tent city’ on council land in Vardon Way site in the Pershore Road, Balsall Heath, area of Birmingham. Their demand was for more rented affordable homes in the city amidst criticism that the local Tory/Lib Dem council is wasting land by selling it to private developers to build and sell high price houses.

Despite the city’s motto, "Forward Birmingham", the largest single council in the country seems to be in fast reverse gear when it comes to housing. It seems to believe that public bodies should continue to engage in speculative activity by holding onto unused land and buildings with a view to selling them off to the highest commercial bidder. In opposition to this, JfC camped at a derelict site demanding social housing and lasted for over a week before the council had them ejected. But the squat was moved only yards away and the now renamed the "John Lines Homeless Village", after the Tory city council `Cabinet member for Housing’, a full-time job paying something like twice the average wage.

Around 30 people from different parts of the city stayed at the camp, some of whom are on waiting lists for social housing and some homeless people also joined the camp. The protesters also attended a council meeting where, according to the local press, they threatened to occupy the roof of the home of Councillor Lines, and he in turn "threatened to set his dogs on them".
Councillor Lines, a representative of a leafy suburb, is what is often euphemistically called a "colourful character". His brief extends beyond housing to ASBOs and anti-social behaviour. In May 1983, he was convicted of assault in a row over a greenhouse, by hitting an elderly neighbour's son-in-law across the back with a stick and then pinning him to the ground by the throat and throttling him.

Lines was also nominated for mayor in 2000 but was rejected by for being too "right-wing" for multi-cultural Birmingham. The Standards Board also investigated him in 2007 when he publicly quoted as being against the campaign of Ghurkhas for pension rights and called a asylum seekers "scumbags". Such persons could "jump on the back of a lorry, come over under the tunnel and never expect to work a day in his (expletive) life. ... The world’s gone (expletive) mad." Whilst he apologised for his remarks the Board found he had the right to free speech.

Lines has bragged of issuing so many ASBOs that "they would be like confetti … People have a right to be protected from the harassment of neighbours from hell" Interestingly, the unprovoked attack arose when he was told to move his greenhouse off the neighbour’s land but claimed it was now his as he was "invoking squatters' rights".

Unaware, perhaps, of Councillor Lines’ robust past, the Vardon Way squat, called a solidarity Halloween party now it though it was secure in its new location. But, under Cllr Lines’ orders, the city council refreshed legal action to eject the squatters by including the new location and the squat has dispersed only to reappear at a local pub, the Firebird, derelict but one of many no doubt closed due to falling custom due to the smoking ban. The plan is to refurbish the old building, renamed by the sqautters the `Community Justice Centre’, and to provide shelter and food to those who are not given affordable social housing by Birmingham City Council. So far, no moves have been made by the owners to turf them out. See: http://justicenotcrisis.wordpress.com/

Commenting on his victory, John Lines, was pleased to respond that: "We are happy that this site will once more be available for the provision of new homes of choice with interested partner organisations." Such partners are, of course, the major building companies now fast closing down any major building project due ot the recession.

There are larger issues than this unpleasant councillor. Birmingham city council appear not only reluctant to sell land to housing associations, but positively horrified at the suggestion they should develop their own construction projects. Yet, add the growing housing crisis to the problem of collapsing earnings due to the demise of the manufacturing sector, which was so central to the West Midlands economy and the picture becomes clearer. Thousands have lost their jobs and are finding it difficult to secure new ones. But even the 4,000 former MG Rover workers who were lucky to get new jobs following the collapse of the Longbridge car plant have suffered pay cuts averaging £5,640 a year, a new study shows.

Coming up now to four years on from the closure in April 2005, 90% of workers who lost their jobs have found new employment, but two-thirds have seen their wages drastically reduced by an average of £5,640 a year in real terms. Those who were able to get jobs in manufacturing have not fared so badly but those entered the service sector are mostly earning less. People who found work in wholesale and retail, real estate and business services, education, and health and social work all took massive pay cuts. Almost a quarter are in debt or rapidly diminishing their savings.

Across the West Midlands, around 76,000 homes stand empty and unused. Yet, while these houses and flats stand empty and neglected, thousands of people are struggling. Birmingham alone has over 11,000 privately owned homes standing disused and empty according to government figures – the largest number of empty properties anywhere in the country. Despite the demand for affordable housing, 1,100 of these homes have been empty for over five years.

In 2006, in a blaze of publicity, the city council claimed to have launched empro.co.uk, a website providing an opportunity for potential buyers to acquire empty properties in the city. But this was actually a government backed and publicly funded –affair that seems to have little or no transparency. The online service provided information on empty homes for landlords and developers based in Birmingham and West London but was on a list of expiring web addresses in the summer of 2008. It was then snapped up by an inveterate purchaser of domain names called Denys Ostashko. Under him, it appears to have reinvented itself as a market exchange for web advertisers of a diverse range of services, including music, flowers, fitness and, distastefully, even porn!

Yet local Authorities also have new powers of last resort to make Empty Dwelling Management Orders, or EDMOs, to take on the temporary management of a property when a voluntary, partnership approach has failed. EDMOs chould help increase local housing stock while reducing the need for new development but the Tory/Lib Dem business friendly local government of Birmingham looks unlikely to follow this course.

Meanwhile, according to Ministry of Justice figures, some 30,000 mortgage repossession orders have been made in courts in England and Wales by all lenders in the third quarter, 24% higher than in the same period in 2007. A bit less than half of orders were suspended, pending a settlement of debt. This means that around a thousand families are having their home repossed every single week, with around a hundred of these repossessions taking place in Birmingham.

Forget websites devoted to helping people find new and affordable homes but there are websites dedicating to buying repossessed homes as a business opportunity. As one of them, "UK Investor Panel", puts it: "Buying Investment Property direct from a Motivated Seller has always been the most cost effective way to buy Below Market Value Houses".

Birmingham is still in the grip of a major drive for prestige apartment building. Yet the price of canalside apartments – the city is riddled with canals and properties on land lucratively sold by state owned British Waterways - fall on average by 17.3%, from £185,500 to £153,500, the highest percentage fall anywhere in the country; sales of canal side apartments are down some 80% compared to the summer of 2007.

Under attack over the last three decades has been the provision of social housing. Currently around four million people are on the waiting lists of councils or housing associations. The Local Government Association expects this to rise to five million by the year 2010 and says that around half of all councils cannot meet current demand.

The initiative shown by Justice for Crisis could be just the tip of the iceberg in a new campaign to democratise our housing market. Whilst the occupation lasted for a very short space of time, large numbers of Labour councillors, Green activists and others showed solidarity. Trades unionists and community campaigners need to work much more consciously together in a new mass struggle to win the right to decent jobs and decent homes.

During the Second World War, Communists organising squatting during the blitz, targeting empty flats or what was then commonly termed `luxury housing’, to place people who had been bombed out of their homes. As the war ended and servicemen came home to a life of living with in-laws, a second phase of squatting to reclaim property for the common good ensued. A celebrated prosecution of a large number of Communists for organising squatting movements in 1946 would eventually lead to post-war commitments to building significant numbers of houses for decent rent. Could Vardon Way be the start of something big?