Defend Housing Association Tenants

Councillor Kevin Price joins National Housing Lobby today – against removal of Cambridge tenant rights, particularly new Housing Association tenants The Housing Emergency Lobby has organised a nationwide lobby of Parliament against proposed changes in the Localism Bill (Part 6) being adopted this week which will particularly affect local Housing Associations including tenants of Cambridge Housing Society,  Granta Housing Association and Hundred Houses Society.

This particularly affects North Cambridge wards including King’s Hedges and East Chesterton by

• * Allowing the Housing Associations to end life tenancies for new tenants, in favour of two year tenancy terms
• * Doubling rents for new Housing Association tenants to 80% of market rents and apart from London Cambridge rents are the highest in Britain
• * Putting a lot more people unnecessarily on to housing benefit, as Cambridge market rents are so high, many of whom have never claimed benefit in their lives, and forcing some to be evicted if they fail to pay more.
• * Cutting new housing funding, by blocking funding for new HA house building unless these landlords double the rents, and making the Self Financing Deal much worse for Cambridge Council tenants compared to earlier Labour Government plans which allowed up to a 100 new Council houses each year in Cambridge to be built by the Council.Councillor Price said:
  “I am going to London on behalf of local Housing Association tenants, including many in King’s Hedges, who are under attack from massive, unpublicized Coalition Government changes.
  If the clauses in their Localism Bill go through, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will end secure tenancies and double rents for many Cambridge families, and also remove rights of local homeless people to housing.
  Removing these human rights could not come at a worse time, with no affordable house building and the removal of adequate housing support for people in high rent Cambridge, stealing the only other option for homeless and overcrowded people of private rented accommodation.
  And the Government is planning to hit council tenants next, in exactly the same way.”