Labour's PRS strategy.

Housing problems and statistics

A large part of the document is talking about how awful it all is (with quotes) and how some of the worst standards are to be found in the private rented sector (PRS).  For example:

The PRS represents 16.5% of the total households in England

Nearly 1/3 of all PRS households have children and nearly 15% of all couples with children live in the PRS

The proportion of private rented stock which is ‘non decent’ is 35%, compared to 22% owner occupied homes and 17% of social housing

Safety hazards are in 21% of PRS homes compared to 7% in the social sector

In 2010/11 local authorities received over 86,000 complaints and have said in the past that they are aware of 1,477 serial bad landlords

The report goes on to point out the problems that local authorities have with enforcement issues, and the fact that many PRS landlords are well meaning but lack knowledge of their legal obligations.

The report also refers to the ‘retaliatory eviction’ problem and the general costs to society of poor housing.

To find out what the main suggestions are to resolve these problems you have to read to the end.  They are:

1. A national register of landlords

Which will

Assist local authorities identify landlords

Allow distribution of information to and communication with landlords

Help with deal with the problems of tax evasion (apparently costing the Treasury some half a billion pounds)

Item 4 below also indicates that the right to operate as a landlord will be linked to being on the register.

2. A new national private rented property standard

Which would include current minimum standards on

Tenancy deposits
Energy efficiency
Property conditions
Response times and repairs
The report goes on to say that this will be linked to incentives which will only be available to properly registered landlords (including with HMRC)

3. Improved local enforcement

This will

Remove red tape and make it easier for local authorities to introduce licensing schemes

4. Tougher sanctions on bad landlords

Which will involve

reviewing penalties and sentencing guidelines (presumably by making them less derisory)
assessing how they can stamp out retaliatory eviction
removing bad landlords from the national register so they can no longer operate as landlords
There is also an interesting paragraph which follows this which refers to potential benefits to compliant landlords:

supplying renters from local housing registers (probably not much of an incentive in the current housing shortage)

direct payment of benefit to PRS landlords and
an improved legal process to help landlords evict non paying tenants and tenants who commit anti social behaviour including criminal damage.

Via Tess Shepperson

Violets and violence

Forgiveness is  the essence of the violet that is shed by the heel of the one that crushes it.

Just pretty words.  Forgiveness is the calming rage after the storm and betrayal,  It's the same old story isn't it, illusion / delusion. You think you think, therefore you are.  You live with that disappointment like a broken promise, and a shattered mind. 

But the violence  perpetrated on our streets, the anger unfurled against  the innocent and the outpouring of hatred for the perpetrators, the murderous act and the grief are united in their emotional DNA. What makes a man take a machete and lacerate another human life? What has happened to fragment   that man's psyche into such separateness  that he can commit an act such as this in the name of god? This is not my God.

It is around us  more and more everyday. Acts of selling out, encroaching controls that take away our taken for granted freedom, less choice.  Occasionally there are  big grand gestures, a threat, a house of cards of lies come crashing down, a gratuitous physical act such as snatching  the sleeping bags and the food parcels of the homeless in Redbridge that makes one  physically ill and want to hurt the people who cause the pain.  But grief is like fingerprints, that stain your once pure soul.

Seeking that empty, carved out purity.

RIP  Soldier. 

Carers or Captors?

Report to the Home Affairs Select Committee Inquiry on asylum

By Flo Krause, Farah Damji and Nanki Chawla

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1      This submission examines asylum through a gendered lens, with a focus on housing as a human right. Through our interactions with the women tenants of G4S  we propose policy recommendations with regards to both housing and the contracts and subcontractors in charge of this.

2      We conclude that the current asylum system fails women as a particularly vulnerable group, and must be overhauled in its entirety in order for gender mainstreaming to take place. We assert that housing contracts should only be given to housing associations, rather than corporations, and suggest the Housing First model as an alternative to the current system. We urge an immediate review of the current contractors, in order to assess their capabilities in fulfilling their current mandate, and to ensure that the vulnerable are not being ignored. We also point out that accountability mechanisms and transparency processes are vital to ensuring a fairer, more inclusive new system. We call for trauma sensitivity training for the officials which interact with this group of vulnerable people.

 “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

Maya Angelou 

This is an extract from a report to the Home Afairs Select Committee on asylum, that will be published  in parliament on June 4 2013 at an event hosted by Jeremy Corbyn MP. For further information please email info@kazuri.org.uk

Joint Committee on the draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Bill

A new Joint Committee has been appointed by both Houses of Parliament to conduct pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners)Bill. The Joint Committee comprises 6 MPs and 6 Peers. It will take oral and written evidence and make recommendations in a report to both Houses. The Joint Committee invites interested organisations and individuals to send written submissions by 5 pm on Thursday 13 June 2013as part of the inquiry.

CALL FOR EVIDENCE

The Joint Committee on the draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Bill invites interested organisations and individuals to submit written evidence as part of its inquiry.

The draft Bill

The Joint Committee is particularly interested in receiving evidence on the three options for changes to the law set out in the draft bill. They are:

a.       Disqualifying prisoners sentenced to 4 years or more in prison from voting.

b.      Disqualifying prisoners sentenced more than 6 months in prison from voting.

c.       Disqualifying all prisoners serving custodial sentences from voting – a restatement of the existing ban. 

Please state your opinion on all or any of these options giving clear reasons as to why you, or your organisation, hold that particular view. 

The Joint Committee would also welcome evidence on whether approaches beyond these options should also be considered.

Additional questions

The Joint Committee would also be grateful to receive evidence on the following specific questions. It is not necessary to address every question.

1.      What are the historical and philosophical justifications for denying prisoners the right to vote?

2.      Why is the right to vote considered to be a human right? 

3.      Is disqualifying prisoners from voting a suitable part of their punishment?

4.      What are the financial implications of maintaining the current ban in terms of claims by prisoners for compensation?

5.      Is sentence length a legally robust basis on which to retain an entitlement to vote?

6.      What would be the likely legal consequences, both domestically and internationally of:

a) keeping the law as it is?

b) passing legislation giving some prisoners the right to vote, but in a way that maintains a form of blanket restriction?

c) seeking to comply by enfranchising the minimum number of prisoners possible consistent with our international legal obligations?

7.      Would giving prisoners the right to vote have any significant administrative impact on either the prison system or the Electoral Commission?

8.      Is there any evidence to suggest that allowing prisoners to vote would have a significant impact on particular constituencies?

9.      What lessons can be drawn from the experience of other countries regarding prisoner voting?

Written evidence should be submitted through the submit evidence form on the committee’s webpage:

Committee Webpage: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/draft-voting-eligibility-prisoners-bill/

Submit evidence form: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/draft-voting-eligibility-prisoners-bill/inquiry/submit-evidence-form/

G4S asylum-housing fiasco descends into farce

Things aren't going well in the UK's new asylum housing 'market' that is dominated by the world's biggest security company. Now G4S threatens to evict an asylum-seeker because G4S has failed to pay her rent. Are public services safe in its hands?

On the 4th of May, Angela (not her real name) opened a letter from her landlord which revealed that there were massive rent arrears on her home. Angela is an asylum seeker who lives with her 11 month old son. The letter said that there was £1634 owed in rent. This is true. But it's not her fault. Angela’s rent is, or should be, paid for her by a housing company called Cascade Homes. Cascade is supposed to pay the rent to the landlord’s letting agent, Whitegates. Cascade then should claim the money back from G4S, the world’s biggest security company.

Regular readers may recall that G4S won a government contract last year to house asylum seekers in Yorkshire. I have followed this story closely. I am an activist and researcher and I work alongside asylum seeker tenants in Yorkshire and the North East. Over the months together we have revealed how companies to whom G4S subcontracts the work have repeatedly failed to provide housing fit for human habitation, how their staff have been accused of harassing vulnerable tenants.

With arrears of this scale, not surprisingly the landlord wanted payment or repossession of the property. G4S’s answer was not to pay the debt and continue the tenancy. Instead G4S harassed Angela into moving for the fourth time in a few months, leaving mother and infant son bereft of their medical and support networks.

Angela had been moved to this new Cascade address under the supervision of Leeds City Council in December after experiencing Leeds Cascade Housing properties. She had spent a horrific month in a damp, filthy property infested with cockroaches. Under the asylum rules she had no choice but to stay there, but Angela spoke out and forced G4S and Cascade to move her to a decent property in a neighbourhood where she could keep her links to her church and support networks.

Even in her new property the harassment went on. Male housing workers arrived unannounced demanding to be let in. As recently as 26 April a Cascade worker simply let himself in without any prior arrangement when Angela was out.

Then on Wednesday 1 May Angela got a phone call from a G4S/Cascade male employee who said he was Duncan Wells: he told her that she must move immediately to an address in Pudsey miles away from her present neighbourhood. Wells said he would come to see her on Tuesday 7 May when he would bring ID and take Angela to the new address so that she could see the property.

This was deeply distressing news for Angela. The new address was miles away from her church, support services and a childcare centre she had just arranged for her infant son.

Duncan Wells is the ‘Social cohesion manager’ of G4S for asylum housing in Yorkshire and the North East and should be well aware of grave criticisms in Parliament of the threats to the privacy of asylum seekers in their homes. A Parliamentary inquiry into these matters, led by Sarah Teather MP and supported by the Children's Society, reported in January. During a House of Commons debate on the inquiry, on 27 February, Teather said:

"Almost every family told us that housing contractors routinely enter properties without knocking. We heard not just from one family, but from all of them independently that people just turn up and use keys to let themselves in. . . . It causes terror for children, and is an epithet for the lack of respect with which they are treated. They are treated as luggage rather than people who deserve some dignity and respect. The Government must get to grips with that with housing contractors."

Wells told Angela that she had to move because "the landlord wanted the house back". Angela discovered that this wasn't the whole story when she opened the letter left by her landlord listing the arrears on the house. When, in a meeting with Wells, Cascade housing workers and local campaigners Angela disclosed the letter, Cascade at first tried to deny the arrears. Later, they had to own up to the truth, which was more embarrassing still. There had actually been £1000 arrears on the property and a repossession threat before Cascade moved Angela in.

The worry and distress went on and on. The landlord still wanted the property back. Contractors arrived to start work in preparation for a new tenant. Angela had relentless knocks on the door and calls for her to leave the property, and still not even a written notice to move from Cascade.

Nine days after the phone call, a Cascade worker arrived with a letter giving Angela and her son seven days notice to move and promising a decent house, close enough to enable her to stay connected to her medical and other support networks. On Monday 13 May, twelve days after the phone call from Duncan Wells, and after twelve days of distress and harassment Angela was offered a property which she has seen and accepted, and she will move in there on Thursday 16 May.

G4S had no experience of housing management when it was given a slice of the national asylum housing £620m contracts in June 2012. The private security company had of course a stake in other parts of the ‘asylum market’ with a rocky human rights record in managing immigration detention centres and deportation escort services. Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan father of five, died after being "restrained" by G4S escort staff during an attempt to deport him in 2010.

In Yorkshire and the North East, G4S's worrying reputation motivated resistance from asylum tenants and their willingness to speak out about appalling conditions. Chris Bryant MP, shadow Minister for Immigration, speaking in February's debate, referred to "hideous conditions" in asylum housing. Last year a Zimbabwean asylum seeker in Sheffield said —  "I do not want a prison guard as my landlord".

The Home Office, with its 2012 privatized asylum housing contracts, has produced cut price contracts for slum housing based on a "new delivery model" which is hopelessly inefficient. The model is based on three or (as in the Leeds case) four tiers of landlords, each one slicing off a share of the profits. In Leeds and West Yorkshire, G4S is in overall charge, with actual housing provision subcontracted to Cascade Housing.

A few of Cascade's 700 West Yorkshire asylum housing properties are owned directly by the company. Most are subcontracted from very small private landlords. In Angela’s case Cascade used a lettings agency to rent the property from a small landlord. This added yet another layer of complication and cost and stretched even further the distance between Angela and the state which owes her a duty of care.

Within this ‘flexible’ delivery model the real losers are asylum seekers and their families. G4S and its subcontractors like Cascade have simply failed to find decent properties for asylum seekers. G4S’s own figures released in February suggest that in Yorkshire up to 300 asylum seekers have been placed in ‘no choice’ housing which is unfit, and breaches their contract with the Home Office.

After the conditions in Leeds asylum housing were exposed by asylum seekers and campaigners in December 2012 the Home Office suspended Cascade from the contract by refusing to disperse new asylum seekers to their properties. A G4S letter leaked to campaigners in March suggested that Cascade was in real difficulties delivering the contract following the withdrawal of G4S subcontractor Mantel in the West Midlands. Cascade Housing’s credit rating from www.192.com fell from 49 (credit worthy) in September 2012 to 5 (caution – credit at your discretion, one category above liquidation) on 1 May 2013. Cascade is not paying its bills and its asylum seeker tenants are being put at risk of harm.

Angela’s case also raises issues about the costings and payments to G4S. If Cascade had paid off the rent arrears for Angela’s home it would have been a payment of £475 per calendar month around £15.61 per night for mother and small child.

How much income have G4S and Cascade received from public funds for Angela's home whilst refusing to pay the lettings agent and the landlord? Let's make an estimate.

Payment for dispersal asylum housing has for many years been on a ‘nightly’ basis. In 2011 Leeds Council was part of a consortium that bid £12 to £13 per person per night – losing out to a G4S bid that was reported as between £6 and £12. Cascade may have been losing money on Angela’s house – hence their reluctance to pay.

The G4S asylum housing contracts in Yorkshire and the North East have descended into chaos and farce. The real losers are vulnerable asylum seekers like Angela, harrassed and abused by housing companies, and constantly uprooted and moved by the Home Office and G4S.

The other losers are of course taxpayers who provide public funds for G4S to wreck the everyday lives of mothers like Angela. The Parliamentary Home Affairs committee inquiry into asylum support is due to hear evidence on the G4S asylum housing contracts in the near future. Having observed this unfolding disaster, and having worked with others to try to protect vulnerable people from its harmful effects,  I urge the Committee to recommend that the G4S asylum housing contracts (and the Serco and Clearel contracts in other areas) should be cancelled and transferred to not-for-profit providers in the housing association and voluntary housing sectors.

Very few articles I have researched and written over the past year or so have had happy outcomes. As I completed this one, Angela rang to say another letter had arrived. This time a letter to say that she had been granted right to remain – a refugee now, not an asylum seeker.

Kazuri response to recent announcement by Justice Secretary

Kazuri response to Chris Grayling statement on tougher prison terms for male prisoners

Mr Grayling's recent "getting tough on prisoners" talk makes one wonder whether he has read NOMS commissioning statement 2013 -14.  It reads that reform in the prison system will come about by pro social modelling, rewarding good behavior and evidenced based commissioning.  A copy can be downloaded here.  Perhaps Mr Grayling might like to read it.

http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/about/noms/commissioning-intentions-2013-14-oct12.pdf

It goes on to read that interventions which replicate tough boot camp and authoritarian approaches have no impact on reducing re-offending. All this tough talk about uniforms for the first 2 weeks inside and revised incentive and earned privileges is already in place in the male prison estate.  Most male prisons do have uniforms, recycled saggy bottom sweatpants and worn out T shirts which further degrade and add misery, adding to the shame and misery some unenlightened parts of our society appear to revel in dispensing.  Prison, separation from community and family,  that is the punishment, the rest is about grabbing headlines and brownie points by a government which has alienated the electorate with its punitive policy on those deemed most vulnerable, the poor,  the disabled,  the prisoners. There is a perverse jailer's mentality coming through the rhetoric of punishment and no rehabilitation. Recent proposals to snatch legal representation from serving prisoners in cases against the prison system have a bully boy vindictiveness about them.  We expect justice not  cruelty from our minister.

Furthermore, this dissemination of misinformation such as the amounts spent on prison gym equipment as reported in the Daily Telegraph environment incurred the shock horror of Priti Patel MP, who might like to sort out her own family's dubious politics, are disingenuous and attention seeking. Prison officers use prison gyms.

International law obliges the UK government to provide courses, training and rehabilitation for prisoners of a prison population of 86 000 there are 20 000 places for educational,  employment or training. Money might be better spent on increasing these opportunities so prisoners have the option not to watch  TV.

The secretary of staff for justice had a unique opportunity to transform justice,  which is his stated agenda. Instead he appears to be intent on decimating all notion of fairness and probity.  We urge him to look again and provide trans-formative rehabilitation solutions,  and leave aside the rhetoric.