Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis the scale of which hasn’t been seen since before the Second World War. Millennials are the first generation since the war to face worse living standards  than the last. What had been considered the inevitable progress of social improvement has stalled – and there’s no bigger symptom of that than the inability to access decent housing.

On Maslow’s pyramid, a diagram showing the hierarchy of basic human needs, housing is at the base. The human need for shelter is fundamental – and the absence of adequate shelter for so many millions of people in the UK today causes significant knock-on social problems.

Poor housing leads to poor health, and worse health outcomes in later life. Poor housing breeds depression and mental illness. Poor housing for children stunts educational outcomes, and social mobility. Lack of affordable housing causes a runaway spiral of property values and rental costs, which cramps economic growth creating a vicious circle of unaffordability.

In my hometown of Harlow, where I recently stood as Labour’s candidate to be MP, these problems are acute. Only a few miles outside of London, house prices are astronomical and a new generation of slums are emerging for working-class families.

Known colloquially as the ‘Human Warehouse,’ Terminus House in Harlow is the perfect example of this trend. By exploiting holes in Tory planning laws on ‘permitted development,’ developers are able to convert office space and business units into residential property – offering a far lower standard of space and build quality than would normally be allowed.

Terminus House is a warren of tiny flats, accommodating entire families of up to five people. These are poorly insulated in winter and unventilated in summer, with walls made from cheap prefab material through which you can hear a pin drop. Families are often on insecure incomes – sometimes placed there by the council because of the absence of council housing stock – with extortionate rents paid to private landlords.

Terminus is far from an isolated example. All across the South East of England, property such as this is being converted into residential units at a time where government consistently fails to spur the private development market into building truly affordable houses.

Residents regularly complain of cold and damp, of infestations of cockroaches and bedbugs, and of families with children put in close proximity to drug abuse and violence. It is hard to imagine such awful living conditions in 21st century Britain – conditions our parents and grandparents believed we had confined to the pre-war past. Yet here we are.

The South East isn’t the only place with a housing shortage: the same issue can be found up and down the country. In such a dire state of affairs, Labour members and voters will no doubt expect the Labour Party to be putting forward a bold and radical challenge to this state of affairs. But unfortunately, under the current leadership, our stance is becoming more timid.

Keir Starmer’s housing lead Thangam Debonairre has retreated from the bold housing vision put forward under the previous Labour leadership, and is now practicing a much more cautious approach in the face of the biggest emergency for renters in living memory.

In the recent crisis over unpaid rents – caused by mass unemployment under the coronavirus lockdown – the Shadow Housing Minister said that a policy of cancelling rent for this period would be “un-Labour.” This approach sacrifices thousands of renters, who will now be expected to pay back huge bills accrued while evictions have been suspended over the past few months. 

As the ending of the ban on evictions looms on June 25th there is increasing concern that a wave of no-fault eviction notices will be passed to tenants. This could create a huge spike in homelessness which underfunded local authorities have no adequate means to cope with.

Back in Harlow, I am an activist with Defend Council Housing and Labour Campaign for Council Housing. Locally I’m also a member of Harlow People Before Profit and Corona Virus Action. Each week we are out canvassing residents and monitoring the situation of precarious renters, as well as tackling food poverty and other resident concerns. The level of anxiety is sky high – among the young, those with families and those on low or insecure incomes. 

This is where Momentum can step in and make a difference. It’s clear to me that Momentum needs to be using whatever clout it has to properly intervene in Labour on the issue of housing – and pushing for our party to adopt policies that reflect the dire nature of the housing situation.

That means mass council-house building back on the agenda. It means reforming the planning system – penalising speculation on land, and favouring the development of truly affordable housing. It means protections for renters and an end to the new slums that are plaguing our towns and cities.

I’m standing for Momentum’s National Coordinating Group (NCG) as part of Momentum Renewal, a campaign to transform momentum and make it fit for purpose. Housing will be my number one priority.

At a national level, Momentum needs to be working hand in glove with groups like ACORN and other renters organisations and unions to make sure the experiences of tenants are heard at the highest levels of policymaking. We need to make a bridge between Labour and the tenant movement – ensuring that tenants are in no doubt that Labour is the party there to protect them.

On the NCG, I will make sure that each year Momentum is pressing for serious, member-led policy development on the issue of housing to take through to National Policy Forums – and on to Labour Party conference. I will make sure we are lobbying our shadow housing minister and that we are supporting the housing movement.

The Labour Left needs to remember that we were born from a movement on the streets – and we carry that torch to this day. Socialism is intrinsically linked to working-class community organising, and if we are not embedded in our communities then we can never truly be a part of them.