Housing is our Human Right

Everyone should have access to a low-cost, safe, secure home, built and maintained in ways that protect our planet, improve air quality for all, and allow nature to regenerate.

Homes like these would transform Hackney. No longer would people’s mental and physical health be damaged by overcrowding or waiting years for vital repairs. Children would feel secure, with their own space and somewhere to do homework. Hackney’s young people could afford to create their own homes near friends and family, taking an active role in their communities.

Currently we’re a long way from that. We’re living in a housing catastrophe:

• On average £636k to own a home or £2.5k a month to rent privately. Years to wait for social housing. That’s the reality of housing in Hackney. This is not affordability. It’s exclusion.
• Housing associations are moving further from their original social-rent model, seeking to maximise income. The state of maintenance on our estates – both housing association and council – is in deep decline. Essential repairs can take years and Hackney Council was accused of seeing its work “through the prism of positivity” by the Housing Ombudsman who found it responsible for “severe maladministration”.
• Overcrowding is inhumane — yet in Hackney it has become normalised. The social housing bidding system is broken. Families watch their children grow into adults while still trapped in the same overcrowded flats, waiting year after year to be rehoused. Instead of fixing the crisis, the Labour Council changed the rules removing thousands from the waiting list. Housing needs haven’t disappeared. They’ve been made invisible.
• A model of ‘cross financing’: using public land to build private homes for sale to fund limited social housing, has failed. In its 2022 Manifesto, Hackney Labour promised 1,000 new social-rent homes. Today, in 2026, they are nowhere near having built that number and the “prism of positivity” sees them counting hundreds of houses still in the planning pipeline and often opposed by local residents, in claiming to meet their target.
• The ‘regeneration’ of Hackney’s Estates, such as Woodberry Down, has led to a net loss of social-rent family homes and a vast increase in small, expensive private flats. This gentrification is destroying our communities. Families are forced to move out of the borough, leading to the Labour Council closing primary schools. Whole family support networks are broken by distance, so older adults or vulnerable residents have been forced to rely more heavily on social services.

Let’s builds housing for people not profit

We believe that the value of a house is in its role as a home, not in how much money it can make for a developer. Although central government policies will not make this easy, we will hold developers to account in delivering on their commitments to low-cost housing. We will look at alternative ways of funding the building of social-rent homes so that these are less dependent on the private housing market.

We’re campaigners for better housing

Our six candidates are passionate advocates for social housing as well as for decent standards for private renters. We want to strengthen Hackney’s Tenants and Resident’s Associations (TRAs), to help residents set these up, and access the resources and funding available.

We already work with housing campaign groups including London Renters Union, ACORN, Just Space and the London Tenants Federation. We’ll continue to do that if we run the Council, to fight for rent caps in private rented housing, to fight to end Right to Buy, and to support ACORN’s Bailiff Free Britain campaign. We’ll also work with TRAs, council housing staff and their unions to implement solutions to the bureaucratic nightmare that confronts council and housing association tenants reporting repairs. We will use the landlord licence scheme to ensure private landlords who don’t come up to scratch are sanctioned.

Everyone should feel proud of where they live. To keep our estates clean and to make them beautiful we’ll reinstate free bulky-waste collections, make recycling easier, and expand repair workshops so people can get stuff fixed for free. We’ll also support community gardening groups, and consult children on how to improve their play areas.

What we’ll do if we run the council with the Greens after May

Our priority is to ensure that every Council tenant and leaseholder has a named Housing Officer, who holds monthly face-to-face meetings with residents. We aim for every tenant to have regular housing officer surgeries in Community Hubs within walking distance of their homes.

In addition to that, we will:

• Fast-track rigorous private landlord licencing, to improve housing conditions and create a funding stream through licence enforcement. We’ll use the Council’s enforcement powers, to ensure landlords know their obligations and meet housing standards, or face prosecution.
• Introduce a register of vacant social and private properties, where residents can report empty buildings to speed up re-use. No council or housing association home should be empty for more than a month, unless it’s a safety risk.
• Use of the Council’s enforcement powers to take action against Housing Associations which fail to adequately maintain properties. We will support residents to take the steps necessary to hold them to account including at the First-Tier Tribunal and Courts.
• Radically reform Alternative Dispute Resolution, introducing a rigorous, fair and non-adversarial process that allows residents to challenge social landlords without fear and that’s genuinely impartial and proactive in defending residents’ rights.
• Prioritise the Council’s repairs service. We’ll grow the in-house team of skilled workers with more apprenticeships and revise the list of external contractors to boost opportunities for local businesses. This will reduce the number of Council tenants suffering poor conditions for extended periods.
• Resource the council’s Anti-Social Behaviour team so it can respond to noise and disturbance complaints promptly. With the police, we’ll work to build the neighbourhood policing model so the officers working here know the area and its people. We will continue to monitor and oppose disproportionate use of stop and search and facial recognition technology. Real safety comes from prevention, youth services, housing security and collective care — not surveillance and punishment.
• Change the housing register’s eligibility criteria, so that these clearly reflect the need in Hackney. In particular we’ll ensure families whose children have special needs are given appropriate banding, and prioritise ground-floor or step-free accommodation for disabled and older people. We will support social housing residents ready to downsize and swap homes.
• Review all regeneration projects not yet under contract, with the aim of producing higher numbers of social-rent council homes for families. We’ll prioritise caring for and refurbishing the homes we already have and bringing empty buildings back into use for the community.
• Support and improve accessible housing, including wheelchair-accessible homes and adaptations for those who need them.