The Psychology of a culture is revealed and perpetuated in how they relate to and treat their children and in how they relate to and treat the most vulnerable people within their society. Heal that and we can heal everything.
It is estimated that more than 8 million people live in substandard housing across the UK.
It's not a bad deal to invest £9 billion to improve the lives of 8 million citizens, who will put all of that back into the economy, twice over, and repeat. People in happy secure homes contribute to the economy on many levels.
I think that on a fundamental human level, radical security of home, hearth and table is a key building block of healthy community. Every one is at home.
A little empathy and a budget of £9 billion could go a long way in terms of designing and delivering a policy that could bring about a direct social material improvement in the living situation for a significant population of fellow citizens, those 8 million souls currently living in substandard housing.
Update Edit : As we roll into the Autumn and Winter '22 and energy price speculation drives homes and business energy bills into outrageous levels (the costs of producing have not changed much in the past three years), the adverse health impacts are clear. Sir Micheal Marmot lasy them out.
'This is not airy-fairy stuff, this is shortening lives.'
"All I want is a room somewhere./ Far away from the cold night air …/warm face, warm hands, warm feet. Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly.
To Eliza Doolittle’s lament we can add, not just “loverly”, but healthy, too. George Bernard Shaw, whose play Pygmalion was the source for the film My Fair Lady, was writing about Edwardian London. Yet cold and poor is the reality facing 66% of the population this winter in 21st-century Britain.
Both “cold” and “poor” will contribute to worse health and greater health inequalities. It is a humanitarian crisis. One that will not be solved by tax cuts or removing levies that favour green energy, as seems to be the “solution” proposed by our likely next prime minister. We need to act on the immediate crisis, but we also need to ask how we got here, and what to do to solve the problem of fuel poverty, and its effects on health inequalities, in the longer term.
Fuel poverty has three components: the price of fuel, the quality of housing and ability to pay. The definition used to be having to spend 10% or more of household income to heat your dwelling to an acceptable level. Some variant of that is still used in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England, the definition changed, which makes comparisons difficult: a household is fuel poor if the property has a low efficiency rating and the household disposable income, after housing and energy needs, is less than 60% of national median income.
For the cold part of cold and poor, the causal chain is simple. Inflation in general, and the cost of heating, will lead to fuel poverty. Fuel poverty will lead to cold homes. Cold homes will damage mental and physical health. The health effects are considerable, as laid out in our report, Fuel Poverty, Cold Homes and Health Inequalities in the UK, published today by the UCL Institute of Health Equity.
The health effects start in childhood with lungs damaged by cold, but also by mould and damp that tend to accompany cold in substandard housing. Children who live in cold, damp homes have more respiratory illnesses than children who do not. This higher burden of illness is likely to continue through into adulthood.
Cold damages mental health. Children growing up in cold homes have more psychological symptoms than children in warm homes. They also perform less well in school. A combination of days missed through illness, inadequate conditions for study and homework, and the effects of cold on mental health and development all contribute."
Grift and Wealth Extraction.
First, take a moment to enjoy this satirical Pythone scene of grandees celebrating their past poverty and current wealth, Who among the Tory Party will celebrate after electing Truss or Sunak, both of whom are more or less ignoring the poverty being imposed on millions of British households by rising energy prices, years of wage stagnation, austrity, privatisation of social care and grift, warming in the glow of their extra-large shareholding dividends and low taxation.
"We 'ad it tough!"?
How callous is that?
How much money was lost or or how much wealth was extracted by the corrupted VIP PPE contracting to cronies? How many millionaires were minted? At what cost, was the failure of Test and Trace in impeding spread of the Virus, beyond the 'lost' money? 200,000 avoidable deaths, often of vulnerable people. 1.4 million cases of long COVID. Economic disaster for 3 million small businesses.
What does it mean when the the loss of what it could have been used for, had it been deployed in practical and proven ways to suppress transmission which would have saved lives, prevented chronic disease is of so little interest to our Rulers?
It bears repeating. Minting millionaires whilst negligence 'allowed' 200,000 horrific deaths, each death a catastrophic trauma event. 1.4 million cases of Long Covid. Poverty increasing. Minting Millionaires and celebrating the fact with Wine Fridays! #torydeathparties NHS on it's knees.
Johnson advises the poor to buy a new kettle, during his self congradulation tour.
This Parliment, and this Government, is unfit for purpose if the purpose of Government and democracy is Justice and Healthy Governance.
To be honest, and to be fair, all of that negligence, waste and grift is unforgivable; injustice prevails as long as those new millionaires still have those millions to hand, and as long as the grifters in power remain unindicted.
They - we know who they are - must be sent to trial for Misconduct in Public Office, Corruption, Corporate Manslaughter by Negligence and the newly minted millionaires subjected to class action civil litigation claims to return the misappropriated wealth to the States coffers.
Substandard Government, Substandard Housing, Top Notch Wealth Extraction.
With regards to substandard housing, we do know that such an investment - £9 billion, maybe £12 Billion given recent rises for materials and labour - would pay for itself.
It would, in terms of tax expenditure and future returns as peoples lives are improved, provide a decent and orderly base from which those 8 million people could operate. And, in terms of the savings arising from preventing the harms of substandard housing going forwards means, it makes for a sound economic public health policy.
Avoiding avoidable harms is a sound axiom of healthy governance. An a priori ethical stance. Avoiding avoidable harm is common sense.
If we become aware of a harm, then we cease causing that harm. We look again, and we find another way to do whatever it is, a way that does not cause harm.
And that is why taking reasonable action to assure that the security and comfort of a comfortable, clean and econimically sustainable home is an actualised and lived Human Right, that it is fully met and upheld, has to be an essential element of a healthy democracy.
There is no good reason to not devote such a small part of total government expediture to significantly reducing levels of chronic stress, distress and unhappiness substantively, in quantifiable observeable reality, for millions of people by improving the material standards of 2 millioon substandard homes.
In some sense that reflects how bio-logical life on Earth works. Everyone is at home.
And yes, our civilisation is flawed, and our circumstance as citizens, varied. We all know now that England in 2022 is far, far from a healthy democracy. It is a kleptocracy, it's governing system is operating as a bully cult, and it's people are being bullied by billionaire wealth extractors.
Who will stand up to the bullies?
It is estimated that 8 million people live in substandard housing across the UK.
Which brings me to the matter at hand. I live in substandard housing, have done for 19 years. My landlord finally put in central heating four years ago. I wage a constant battle against mould and damp. I am being evicted because the landlord wants to take the capital gains he has made in the past 20 years, by selling the property, and of course he will not share any of that with me, in spite of the rental income he has gained in that time. I serve merely as an object from which he extracts wealth.
My government supports that wealth extraction, by refusing to legislate fair social rents and by encouraging buy-to-let landlordism to maintain property value increases in order to serve the lenders, more wealth extraction.
I am one in 8 million, powerless to affect the situation, voiceless in policy discourse, marginalised and dehumanised by the billionaire press and broadcast media.
Substandard housing costs the people who have to endure living in such conditions more than the rent they are forced to pay. People in substandard housing bear a burden of ill health and chronic stress through no fault of their own.
Substandard housing also costs the NHS billions annually in terms of illness, accidents and injuries, and the costs go further, in terms of chronic stress and psychlogical health, all the while a group of landlords rake in wealth, extracted from poor, low income folk and from Housing Benefits.
This is unjust. It is an atrocity. Good decent people, our fellow citizens are being exposed to avoidable harm. 8 million people, individuals, families, men, owmen and children, entire communities... cities of people living in disrepair, trapped by a refusal to invest as the landlord extracts wealth, a trap, a socially and economically structured trap. It is not right. It is not fit and proper.
Perhaps the money paid to landlords for Housing Benefits of people living in substandard housing ought to be ring fenced, matched with Government funding, and spent on upgrading these houses to a good standard, to include forward planning adaptations towards lower carbon footprints, and only after that should landlords be allowed to take full profits.
There's a few good arguments for nationalising aspects of housing, as a common resource, maintained by the society as a social resource, a commons that good folk would choose to cherish and nurture.
Contrast the unhappiness and ill health of those who endure substandard housing to the fact that landlords have the increased value of the property which can be used as collateral for further borrowing to buy more property to let, an 'entrepreneurial dynamic' that builds a wealth extraction web of activity, supported by neoliberal legislators whose primary concern appears to be the interests of Wealth Extraction. Unhappiness of renters and the happiness of wealth extractors, the former feeding the latter. The profit of others tears.
Another way to put this is to say the chronic ill health and distress of people living in sibstandard housing is an externalised cost, part of the economics of profiteering of some landlords. The people pay the price, they bear the burden, millions of us.
Is it true that middle class, medium and high earning working class folk tend not to understand exactly what substandard housing means? How could someone who has never lived in substandard cousing really understand what this aspect of England is really like.
It certainly does not have to be this way Resolving the situation would build a happier, safer more civil society.
The following is taken from the article linked above.
BRE report finds poor housing is costing NHS £1.4bn a year - 9th November 2021
BRE report – ‘The Cost of Poor Housing in England’ – quantifies the cost burden to the NHS caused by hazards arising from poor quality homes in England.
Findings reveal that 2.6 million homes in England – 11% of the country’s housing stock – are categorised as ‘poor quality’ and therefore hazardous to occupants
Most common hazards are those that cause injuries on stairs, while the costliest issue for the NHS (£857million p/a) is poor quality housing leading to excess cold
According to BRE’s analysis, more than half (£857 million) of this annual NHS treatment bill can be attributed to defects in poor homes which expose residents to excess cold, while the second biggest cost to the NHS comes from hazards which cause people to fall and injure themselves, predominantly on staircases.
Both issues are particularly dangerous for the most vulnerable in society, such as older people and families with young children.
BRE was able to quantify the cost of poor housing to the NHS by combining existing data from the 2018 English Housing Survey (EHS) on health and safety hazards in the home, with NHS treatment cost figures.
According to the latest EHS, an estimated 2.6million homes in England – 11% of the country’s housing stock – contained at least one ‘Category one hazard’ and were therefore considered ‘poor’.
Today’s report follows a similar study by BRE published in 2016.
The most common Category 1 hazard is the risk to a fall on stairs, such as disrepair to, or a lack of a handrail or balustrade, with over 1 million such cases recorded in 2018.
Fixing this issue alone would save the NHS £219million a year in treatment costs. Dampness is also a common and costly issue for the NHS, with 75,000 homes in England suffering from the most serious dampness in 2018, leading to a £38million annual bill for the NHS. In addition, there are many more homes with non-category one dampness (less serious) which have an impact on people’s health.
The cost of addrressing this vs the costs of allowing this situation to continue.
source: article linked above
As part of the study, BRE also calculated the total cost of eliminating each Category one hazard.
From this, we can see that the cost of mitigating risks associated with dampness, for example, would effectively be paid back in seven years, thanks to costs saved.
In total, BRE estimates that the total cost to remedy all Category one hazards in homes in England would amount to £9.8billion – which is around seven times the cost the NHS faces annually for first year treatment costs from these hazards.
Within its report, BRE also identifies that, beyond the cost to the NHS, there are ‘societal costs’ brought on by poor housing, such as those relating to long-term care, mental health and poorer educational achievement. BRE’s findings indicate the cost to wider society of poor housing could equate to £18.5 billion per year.
So it is quite clear that for a relatively small direct investment, the Government could transform the lives of millions of people. Investments that engender best physiological and psychological health, work that will offer a boost to local community level construction industry. Adaptations to existing stock that can add to better carbon foot print for the nation's rented housing stock.
A government enacting a policy to do all of this will walk away with the kudos and warmth and respect of having achieved genuine social improvements that also support the NHS and improve educational outcomes - did I mention that children living in substandard housing do not fare so well at school as do their contemporaries living in good standard housing?
That is a win-win situation for any Government.
That is a win-win situation for tennants and landlords alike.
Failure to take action on this matter is criminally negligent and socially stupid.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
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