Homeless or home more in Jersey? Charity or right? Power or Green at the edges?

Deputy Power was Housing Minister briefly two years ago and he had announced virtually all the proposed reforms that Deputy Green has subsequently outlined.

So the reforms had been kicking around for some time and even Deputy Le Main was singing a similar song before he was removed from this same office and he had been there for years and years….

What is surprising about all this is that whilst everybody who has been in charge of housing for so long claim to have identified the problems and have come up with virtually the same solutions – NOTHING ever actually happens.

Thus we now have Deputy Power speaking on behalf of the hundreds of “homeless” people in Jersey in the name of Shelter or the Sanctuary Trust. But why did he not promise to solve the problem when he was Minister and why are his demands apparently different now from those of Deputy Green? Are they any different in fact?

When the Draft new Island Plan was being reviewed by the two UK Inspectors – Deputy Power was asking for the Housing Policy part to be removed until the Census statistics had been properly assessed. His request (and I asked for the whole Draft Plan to be withheld) was ignored and we are now stuck with an Island Plan that will never ever solve Jersey’s immense housing problems.

That cows are more deserving of land than people is still the basis of the Island Plan.

The needs of the homeless will never be addressed under the Plan – these are just to be left to charitable whims as always in the traditional “Jersey way”. Deputy Power seems to support that charitable response.

Unlike other countries – there is no legal obligation to house anybody in Jersey.

The 1949 Housing Law actually exists to prevent people from occupying or buying housing accommodation. It is this perverse policy that has underwritten all others for emotional reasons based upon a bogus “Jersey born first” idea. But in practice it just serves to starve the natural housing market of funds and suppress new house building.

Yet 20,000 people with housing quals live outside Jersey – what does that say about 60 years of the Housing Law in “action”?

Cows rule OK!

Deputy Power now complains that one of the reasons for so much homelessness is the high cost of homes to rent. So nothing very new there – yet the whole basis of the absurd revised Housing plan proposed by Le Main or Power or now by Green is to RAISE so called social housing rents to be as near as possible the same as already absurdly inflated “private rents”.

This problem does not just affect the homeless of course. It affects everybody who has to rent accommodation and it is now officially accepted that there is no such thing in Jersey as AFFORDABLE property to buy.

How on earth have we got into such a mess and why are our elected reps so incapable, decade after decade, of solving the problem?

It is not just the cost of property either. The standard of much States “social” housing is poor and it is part of the declared new plan to “regulate” to improve this. But MOST housing is in the private sector where rents are highest and standards often lowest besides which petty restriction are sill imposed against children or pets and there is lack of security of tenure for many.

WHY are we the public still waiting for basic reforms in these areas and why do we no longer have a Rent Control Tribunal?

Deputy Green keeps telling us that his Housing White Paper will appear soon.

It will no doubt be yet another PR opportunity for Senator Ozouf et al to say how well off we all are etc (whilst he continues to extract over £20 millions of “social” rents each year to squander at Lime Grove, Ogley’s pay off and suchlike) but it will certainly NOT offer any escape from Jersey’s housing problems for most residents of Jersey.

Make no mistake we are gripped by a User Pays, cost cutting obsessed government that has no motivation to house the whole population properly.

SSTAG will be continuing to investigate all these matters and more in the coming months. So stay tuned but most of all JOIN US! Give us your support and spread the word that such unfairness can and must be challenged.