Housing cuts spell massive rise in homelessness and

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 1-2 of 6; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 4 of the scan

£365 million slashed from direct spending programmes by 1978/9 as compared with last year's plans -that is the Wilson Government's answer to rising rents, homelessness, empty houses, and unemployment in the building industry.

Successful implementation of these cuts would deliver a mighty blow to the right of decent housing for all the working class in two main ways: it would mean more rent rises, and increasing decay and dereliction of sub-standard housing. The contribution council rents make to the housing budget will be increased trom as per cent o su per cent to provide £310 million more by 1978/9 - money taken from the pockets of the working class to finance massive loan mcrest repayments.

Ninety per cent of the Greater London Council's rents already go straight to une minance nouses as interest repay ments. The Government's soft-soap claim that they aren't cutting housing "as much as they could have is just a cover to hide the real purpose of their 'updated housing budget in keeping with the nanonal interest - to socea up repayments to the City moneylenders. who have more interest in housing than most other social spending.

TRANSPORT On top of this. council cash for improvement of older property will be slashed from E374 million (1976) to £275m (1979 801. although improvement grants for private owners will stay at £122m.

The slashing of bus and London underground subsidies from £135m (1976) to £60m (1979) will also make the urban housing crisis even worse. gradient will mean more depopulation. homelessness and empty housing in the cities. The Government's urban policy is about as close to a coherent socialist plan as Moss-side is to Buckingham Palace.

In a pathetic attempt to try to paper over the sickeningly bad housing crisis, the Government is now turning to the Tory solution - housing associations. By tnis metnod or counci loans for housing programmes, the Government hopes to get something' built but avoid the responsibilities for rehousing and maintenance which go with the greater pressure the working class can bring to bear on council housing. So grants for housing associations will rise more than a hundredfold from £2.7m (1974/5) to £365.4m (1977/8).

These schemes - like the whole Government perspecave. for nousing which is to force the council housing programmes to run at an increasca pro fit to satisfy the moneylenders - are no

page 5 of the scan

"Women and Red Weekly 4 March 1976 Women 5

----- pull-quotes -----

IN LONDON all shes goal DEREK BOWIE (IFL