Regina Boakye, who lives in Crouch Hill, and Khaleda Begum, who lives in Highbury, have been waiting several years to be rehoused in larger properties

• THE report about the housing crisis (Mums on the front line of housing crisis say they feel ‘broken’, December 10) was both heart-breaking and infuriating.

Heart-breaking because of the very cramped conditions in which Regina Boakye and Khaleda Begum have had to raise their children who, on becoming young adults, now have to move out of the borough to find accommodation they can afford.

And infuriating because Islington is awash with new developments offering homes that families on low incomes would never be able to afford.

The more recent developments contain a percentage of homes classified as “genuinely affordable”, which includes shared ownership where, for a minimum share in a two-bedroom flat, household earnings have to be a minimum of £67,500 a year.

Both Islington’s Local Plan (2020) and Shelter, in its 2020 report A Capital in Crisis, indicate that only council (target) rents are genuinely affordable for most people in housing need.

Islington Homes for All believe that the quota of genuinely affordable housing in private and housing association developments in the borough should be solely for council rent.

There are other factors affecting housing provision. First, sales of street properties owned by housing associations which were bought with large grants of public money when they were charities.

Nowadays housing associations are no longer publicly accountable. In the past two years Peabody has sold off 33 such homes on the open market in Islington, three of them three- and four-bedroom homes, so greatly needed by Ms Boakye and Ms Begum.

We suggest Islington Council establish a protocol with housing associations (which they are legally entitled to do) whereby the council will buy homes that HAs wish to dispose of – at greatly reduced rates – in the form of stock transfer. This will transfer publicly-funded homes for best public use.

Then there are the borough’s empty homes. The 29 three- and four- bedroom ex-warders’ flats next to Pentonville Prison, belonging to the Ministry of Justice, stood empty for years.

Rather than allowing Islington to lease the flats to house local families the MoJ chose instead to sell them to “achieve best value for money”. Perhaps the council could issue “empty dwelling management orders” on homes which have been empty for more than two years.

We support Islington’s policy of building another 550 new council homes and agree with Cllr Diarmaid Ward’s comment that the 1980 Right to Buy scheme for council homes has reduced council housing alarmingly.

With a 70 per cent cut in core funding from a government that appears indifferent to the needs of people on low incomes, it is obvious our council, however well-intentioned, (and we do consider it to be very much so) cannot currently meet the needs of all 14,000 households on its housing waiting list.

However Islington Homes for All believe there are areas to explore which would increase social housing provision further.

JENNY KASSMAN
Islington Homes for All