Newham Greens backs the Newham Housing Justice Charter

The Newham Green Party fully supports the London Renters Union and the Newham Housing Justice Charter. We believe everybody deserves warm, dry, secure, and comfortable homes safe from eviction, as a basic human right. No one should be faced with having to leave their home borough, and their support networks, in order to receive that. No one should be unable to eat because they’re spending too much on rent.

Green councillors will demand the Labour council end the shipping of already vulnerable people out of the borough into parts of the country they have never been to and do not know anybody. We understand there is no substitute for the security that a safety network of family and friends can provide. Community has never been more essential. As part of our work on fighting for better treatment of those struggling with their mental health, we will demand this be taken seriously when assessing housing applications.

The Green Party at all levels have long been arguing for rent controls and better conditions for renters. As a renter herself, Sian Berry, Green London Assembly member and candidate for Mayor of London first called for a London Renters Union in January of 2016[1]. Sian has fought for a genuine living rent, and in December 2021 launched a new campaign to fight for local rent controls[2]. The Newham Green Party fully endorses Sian’s pledge to stand with renters[3], including rent controls and an abolition of no-fault evictions. Greens are fighting for a Rent Commission for London to finally put rents on a downward trajectory. Greens back calls for rent payment history to be included in mortgage affordability assessments and credit ratings, and 100% mortgages to extend housing ownership to those who want it.

Newham must be a borough for renters. Greens will revoke the Additional Licensing designation which has all but banned young people, who are significantly more likely to form parts of Houses in Multiple Occupancy (HMO), from renting in most parts of Newham, reducing the pressure on rents in Stratford and the surrounding area, while fighting for rent controls and building more homes to ensure rents do not rise elsewhere in the borough.

The Newham Green Party understands that landlords make an incredible amount of money from their tenants, often with very minimal work leading to tenants suffering under terrible and often illegal conditions. The council must play their part in fighting this, by using their powers to prosecute landlords who breach licensing conditions, and Greens will ensure the council is resourced to do this. The council must not cooperate with the Government’s hostile environment as part of this.

Temporary housing is too often nothing of the sort. People are languishing on housing waiting lists in substandard and unsuitable housing. It is not sufficient to place “affordable” or “social” housing quotas on developers – we need to build genuine council homes at a rate not seen for generations. Green councillors will add to the call for an end to the right to buy, and will fight for councils to have the power to borrow to build council housing. We will fight for a retrofit-first approach, and all demolitions must go to genuinely democratic ballots with fair spending limits on both the council and on any community opposition, as part of a wider community involvement process. Temporary housing must meet minimum safety and quality standards to ensure those waiting for permanent housing can live in safety and comfort. We will not continue to place people with temporary accommodation providers who refuse to meet these conditions.

Disabled renters have the same right to housing as anybody else, but too often they are being failed by councils who do not consider accessibility as part of their provision. Greens believe in accessible, and transparent council services, and will ensure there are dedicated email addresses and phone numbers for services, and face-to-face meetings are available for those who need it. Long, black hole online forms are distressing and opaque and we will phase out their usage.

From our Newham Mayoral candidate Rob Callender: “I share a privately rented flat with a friend. In fact I’ve privately rented shared accommodation my entire adult life. Luckily I’ve had good landlords but I know many who suffer as a result of landlords putting rents up or evicting people so they can charge someone else a higher rent. As well as rent controls, landlord licences, ending right to buy and ‘retrofit first’, we need to bring empty homes back into use and we need more homes built by the council on publicly owned land – of which there is more than enough in Newham, especially in the docks and Beckton Riverside, where much of the empty land is owned by the GLA. The council is sitting on unspent infrastructure funding that is meant to support such housing provision.

Renters deserve better from their council, and Greens will be their champions on the council.”