• IN our time where reason is overawed by irrationality, usually for the benefit of a powerful and rich elite, reasonable solutions to social problems appear radical.

In his time as our representative, one of Frank Dobson MP’s radical, reasonable, ideas was the utilisation of homes left vacant as places for people to live.

The fundamental irrationality of property asset speculation (not “buy-to-let” but “buy-to-leave vacant”) is that a flat/home only becomes a marketable asset if it is a habitable dwelling or in prospect of becoming one and, unlike “buy-to-rent”, this form of investment relies on depriving a family of a home.

In addition to profits, sometimes 20 per cent per annum, these assets are collateral for leveraged borrowing and other fantasy finance and risk bringing the same conditions that caused the crash 10 years ago.

Although the invisible hand of market forces is seen by some as determining economic and social circumstances, there the visible hand of government seems to play a decisive role.

This includes housing benefit, primarily as a fund for landlords, then manipulated to facilitate gentrification, and a policy to eliminate public housing as in the housing act of last year, among others. Also speculators rely on local government subservience to their interests.

As well as rigged consultation replacing grassroot popular meetings, planning permission is granted even though what is to be built is well in excess of any local effective demand or people who can afford the properties. Clearly the expectation is for investment not occupancy.

And the purpose of architectural apartheid, as on the Maiden Lane estate, to separate social classes in proximity is to maintain property prices as much as it is to accommodate snobbery.

Currently, in response to there being now 20,000 vacant homes in London, there is a reasonable solution. Emma Dent Coad, MP for Kensington and Chelsea, is to propose legislation that will bring these “buy-to-leave vacant” homes into use.

And such a proposal can only benefit from more of the public contacting their MPs and engaging in campaigns in support.

In that today both the welfare of social democracy and the underlying Victorian communitarianism, which were never constitutionally entrenched, are being undermined it is my opinion that reform is necessary.

Such reform should go beyond the tinkering with constitutional formalities, as we have seen in the last decade, and establish social rights. This would include the constitutional right to a home.

RD WARREN
Broadfield Lane, NW1