WHY is the NHS a source of pride for the British people while social housing is viewed with disdain? 

Healthcare for all is widely seen as one of our country’s greatest achievements yet the creation of millions of decent and affordable homes has become a tainted project with social tenants considered undeserving of their subsidised homes.

This attitude has made it easier for the private housing market to rapidly eat away at Britain’s council stock to the point where less than 8 per cent of the population now live in social housing — compared to 42 per cent in 1979.

Director Paul Sng, whose film about council housing has attracted huge audiences across the country, says that in order to save social housing it must be seen for what it is — a basic human right.

“Housing is a fundamental human need and it really should be as important in people’s lives as the NHS,” he says. “We’re all very proud and very protective of the NHS and now we need to be the same about social housing.”

Thousands of council-owned homes have been lost over the past three decades through Thatcher’s right to buy policy. However in the past 10 years, a more destructive force has been snatching public property and converting it into private property — so-called regeneration schemes.

Sng’s film Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle takes in several communities that have been pulled apart after their homes were handed over to the private sector and regenerated.  

Narrated by actress Maxine Peak, the film shows the pattern that regeneration all too often follows. First councils or housing associations mislead tenants into thinking that the redevelopment is for them when actually it’s about removing them.

Once they’re kicked out, the bulldozers come in, public property is turned into private and hundreds of expensive homes are built in their place. It’s a cruel and stomach-churning display of greed.

This was the case in London’s Aylesbury estate where Sng spent a lot of his childhood. Against the wishes of its tenants, Southwark council decided to go ahead with its demolition plans, claiming that the blocks were too dilapidated to refurbish.

Leaseholders were offered far below market value for their properties, meaning they would be forced out of the area. The new blocks will then comprise less than half the original number of social housing, with the “affordable” rent of these properties likely to be far more than the tenants previously paid.

Over on the other side of London in Poplar, the film talks to former tenants of Erno Goldfinger’s brutalist Balfron Tower. The block is now completely private after housing association Poplar Harca booted out every single social tenant.

Soon, the flats will be available on the open market for buyers who probably fetishise over the socialist architect’s work — and are far from the working-class people Goldfinger had intended to live there.

Although these schemes have been going on for more than 10 years, it’s only over the past few months that we’ve seen social housing pushed to the top of the political and news agenda.

After the Grenfell tower disaster, it is no longer possible to ignore the disturbing state of Britain’s housing market in which luxury properties, aesthetics and money are prioritised over the homes and lives of working-class people.

Coincidentally, Dispossession has been touring Britain since June, during this period of heightened awareness. Sng believes that this is why Dispossession has proved so successful, with screenings selling out in London, Glasgow, Nottingham, Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham.

 “I think Grenfell happened at a time when it could have happened anywhere,” he says. “These estates have been run so far into the ground that it was only a question of when, really. And I think that really resonated with the public.”

After watching Dispossession, one of the first things people want to do is to get involved, Sng says. Following the film, audience members are asked to pick up leaflets with the contact details of various housing campaigns.

Although grassroots campaigns have managed to delay or even stop demolitions in the past, it has frustrated social tenants and activists that they have largely been the only advocates for council housing, with very few politicians speaking out on the issue.  

Last Wednesday, however, Jeremy Corbyn offered a glimmer of hope that things could change. During his closing speech at the Labour conference, the Labour leader said what no other senior politician has dared to: that estate regeneration often means “forced gentrification and social cleansing.”

His pledges — to ensure councils ballot social tenants and leaseholders before regeneration and to give every tenant the right to return to the redevelopment — would, if implemented, sound the death knell for many regeneration schemes.

But what Corbyn failed to do, Sng points out, is mention that it’s mostly Labour councils pushing through regeneration plans.

When I asked Sng what he thought about the speech, he said: “It was a welcome shot across the bows, rather than an outright declaration of war on the councils guilty of social cleansing.”

Labour-run councils in London have or are about to tear down 195 estates. One of the estates facing imminent demolition is Cressingham Gardens in Tulse Hill.

The council pushing for demolition, Lambeth, comes across in Dispossession as an almost Machiavellian villain — and with good reason.

Following a “consultation” process in which tenants chose refurbishment over demolition, a Lambeth councillor declared on Twitter that Cressingham Gardens would be torn down. There’s no nice way to be told that your home will be destroyed, but announcing the decision on Twitter, as Sng says, “displays a complete lack of empathy.”

The filmmaker stresses that more pressure is needed from housing campaigners and Labour members to ensure that Labour councils like Lambeth actually listen to Corbyn’s words and toe the party line.

Hope is in sight for social housing, but there’s still a long way to go.

Paul Sng is the director and producer of Sleaford Mods: Invisible Britain (2015) and Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle. Bethany Rielly is a Morning Star subeditor.