Welcome

Back in the day, Camden Council was in The Sun newspaper all the time. Rightly or wrongly, we were a laughingstock to them. In the 80s, The Sun sold about four million copies a day. So, everywhere I went folk poked fun at me for working in housing at Camden. I avoided telling people what I did as a job and if pushed pretended to be something impressive like a civil engineer. Yesterday, this all came back to me.

I made the train by the skin of my teeth and sat at a table next to two gentlemen. They’d been to a conference in Manchester and were talkative. Turns out they ran cab firms in London. As soon as they discovered I was a cyclist the mickey-taking began and went on for two solid hours. It was great fun.

Then they asked me what I did for a living, apart from giving them target practice on the Uxbridge Road. That’s when I got déjà vu all over again.

As soon as I said I worked with housing associations, they were up and running. The younger man was a tenant of a major association while the older man lived next door to another of their homes. It was a repeat of the ITV coverage and Kwajo’s Twitter feed. They were saying the same things, but with one big difference: these guys were just laughing at the association. To be fair, the quality of their humour was excellent with none of the offensive stuff you got from The Sun. Make no mistake, the cab guys are sharp. They need to be to keep the likes of Uber at bay.

If solid citizens like that hold us in contempt, we have a big problem. There’s no dressing it up. We have to change. The appalling reputation of council housing paved the way for transfers to housing associations. So, we’ve seen this film before. Mud sticks! Somebody somewhere will start to push an alternative to associations if we keep going as we are. And things may not get any better, if the taxi trade is anything to go by. My new friends tell me they’re cheaper and more reliable than Uber. But in the end Uber may well have the clout to win.

The proposals to beef up regulation in the Queen’s Speech might help. But they’ll only be effective if landlords wake up and the regulator comes out the traps flying. Ordinary hard-working citizens think we’re hopeless. A rocky road lies ahead of us.

Many have placed their faith in mergers as the silver bullet to cure every ail. Yet we cannot escape the fact that so many of the bigger landlords are the very ones that are in the firing line. Is size a factor? Surely, it’s time to call for a no-holds-barred study on the cost and effectiveness of how we run housing. And let’s get an outside expert to do the work. Such a study needs to start from the tenants up and not the boardroom down.

Finally, I must pay tribute to Steve Douglas. Over the years I went to many meetings with Steve, and he was always very sharp mentally and sartorially. And just so warm. I live near one of his hostels. It’s next to a busy junction and one night there was a car crash that upset the residents. As I passed by, I spoke to the hostel staff. They knew and loved Steve. That’s the mark of the man. We’ve lost a very fine Gooner.