By GMHA (@gmhousingaction)

The PSPO has been recalled by one of the scrutiny committees on the council. This presents us with a final opportunity to stop its implementation. We must take it.

 

In November 2019, a proposed PSPO around the Centre was considered by the Council’s Communities & Equalities Scrutiny Committee (CESC).

 

Dr Morag Rose from Liverpool University, Kathy Cosgrove from Greater Manchester Law Centre and City Centre Ward Councillors attended to provide their comments on the proposals.

 

The minutes of that meeting, including a summary of the contributions and Committee recommendations can be found here.

 

On 2nd March 2020 the Strategic Director of Neighbourhoods (the “Decision-Maker”) issued the Key Decision to implement the City Centre PSPO, following a discussion, amendments and a vote in favour of the (amended) PSPO, at the Labour Group.

 

Cllr John Hacking, Chair of the Communities & Equalities Scrutiny, has asked for the decision to be “called in” – i.e. basically referred back to the Decision Maker on the following terms:

 

“To hear from the Decision Maker that the concerns raised at the CESC meeting on the 7th November 2019 have been taken fully into account prior to the decision being made”

 

A special meeting of the CESC has been convened on the 11th March 2020, 2pm, to deal with the call-in. Members of the Committee will be asked whether they will refer the decision back to the Decision Maker for reconsideration.

 

Cllr Hacking has confirmed that no external contributions will be heard and only Committee members will be able to speak.

 

The Greater Manchester Law Centre have published an up to date briefing on the situation, laying out the case against the implementation of the PSPO. It can be read here.

 

We at Greater Manchester Housing Action are calling for the Scrutiny Committee to refer this back to the Strategic Director of Neighbourhoods for reconsideration, and in the final instance that the PSPO be rejected and not implemented.

By Jamie Jover (@jamiejover)

‘Mass tourism kills the city’ has become a common slogan on stickers and graffiti in many cities across southern Europe. The emergence of short-term holidays lets, especially Airbnb, has triggered the displacement of local populations, as housing has turned (even more) into a asset. Against that situation, social movements have started to organise and fight for the right to housing in different ways.

 

There is increasing evidence of how Airbnb disrupts the housing market, driving up prices, and welcoming new actors (usually international investors) that purchase a property in a city sometimes even without having ever been there, and with the only purpose of maximizing profits through tourists’ rentals. This is happening across the world, but in certain cities with an economy based on tourism, its impact is stronger. Venice could be the most striking case, with a population of 300,000 and around 25 million people visiting each year the pressures on housing are becoming unmanageable . Athens, Barcelona and Lisbon are also common examples, as well as other touristic, southern European cities, such as Napoli, Porto or Seville.

 

Seville is an important example of these changes in southern Spain. Despite the city growing in population, its historic district –where most sights and the tourist infrastructure concentrates– has lost 3,600 inhabitants since 2013, when Airbnb landed on the Spanish market. Similarly, there are around 4,000 legal short-term rentals, although estimations raise the figure up to 8,000-9,500, depending on the season, and in a city smaller than Greater Manchester. The City Council keeps welcoming tourism as the key sector for the urban economy, and especially Airbnb, arguing they have helped to rehabilitate vacant houses in the urban centre. However, our reality is different: leases that are not renewed, others that are terminated early, increasing rental prices. Few houses were derelict and have recovered thanks to the so-called ‘sharing economy’. On the contrary, Airbnb is pushing us out. And a range of other impacts are being felt: from noise in neighbouring apartments to the loss of long-standing communities. People are losing the social bonds that connect them to places.

 

The impact of the process was already noticed in 2016, and by 2017 a few neighbourhood associations, collectives for the right to housing and social movements joined together to cope with it: CACTUS (Collective-Assembly against Touristification in Seville) was born. Ever since, we have hosted two meetings to discuss the topic and spread the word with fellow activists: the first one a national wake-up call in November 2017, and the second in April 2019, within the Southern of Europe facing Touristification Network (SET Net), a conglomerate of 20 cities from Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, and Spain. In these meetings, we have talked about the specific impacts on our cities, communities, and bodies; we have shared organisation strategies; we have discussed measures that could be implemented and we have undertaken direct actions (demonstrations, anti-tourism information points, city walks, etc.) Alliances with ecologists, feminist or pro-migration organisations have also proven very useful to raise awareness on a topic that concerns many people in different ways.

 

Locally, we have managed to push the Council to create a Housing Price Reference Index, an online tool that gathers the price of letting across the city neighbours, and relates it to the (official) number of Airbnb properties. The Index includes information for the last 5 years, showing clearly how rent prices have gone up in those areas more impacted by Airbnb. It also includes a reference housing price, so that people looking for leases have an idea about how much the price per square meter costs in every neighbourhood. However, we have not managed to increase control over Airbnb or stop the government issuing licenses for short-term lettings, meaning the city is facing a unprecedented housing crisis. We have helped achieving other milestones at other scales, such as the reform of the Spanish Lease Act, which reduces the cases by which an owner can kick tenants out, and increases, from 3 to 5 years the maximum period for a lease. And we still have a path to walk in order to lobby at the international, European scale. Yet most importantly, our fight has helped us to bring together people from diverse backgrounds in many neighbourhoods suffering from the increase of Airbnb. The mobilisation against short-term lets, especially Airbnb reinforces the struggle over the right to housing in Seville, it should act as a warning to cities such as Greater Manchester.

Jamie Jover is an academic and activist from Seville who is undertaking research on the impact of Airbnb across Europe.

By Beth Redmond

@redbethmond

 

The theme of this year’s MIPIM conference, due to take place in Cannes next month, is The Future Is Human. MIPIM is a congregation of some of the very worst humans on the planet; those who either want to sell fake, exaggerated illusions about their contribution to the global property market; or people who want to throw money at other’s illusions, hoping it will prove lucrative to their wallets and legacy within the industry. 

 

For some perspective, a standard pass to MIPIM will set you back €2095. Unfortunately that doesn’t include VAT, but it does include a discounted rate on the helicopter which you can choose to pick you up from the airport. It gives you the chance to network with 26,800 other participants in the property sector and access to 6380 investors MIPIM will “matchmake” you with if you’re able to sell your brand.

 

MIPIM’s website boasts 480 speakers spanning sessions on subjects including data, technology, sustainability, governance and happiness. One of the more interesting sessions, “How do we build and invest in what people need, want and can afford?” could have the potential to explore progressive ideas based on the title alone. But the session is chaired by the fund director of PfP Capital, a fund management business delivering “ongoing value growth in the rental market”. 

 

Of course, in a world where the majority of wealth is hoarded by the elite, it is inevitable they will meet up and discuss best practice in making sure the wealth remains undistributed amongst the rest of us. Though they could have chosen somewhere more subtle to plot than Cannes.

 

What should come as a shock, but by no means a surprise, is that our elected representatives swan amongst the very, very wealthy investors and property developers. There is another discussion to be had about whether it is worth attempting to persuade these people that their definition of affordable is only applicable to those earning over £50K, or whether it is worth listening to them pay lip service to those of us on low-incomes. I don’t think it is. 

 

Regardless, that isn’t what Manchester City Council are trying to do at MIPIM. Their involvement has become so huge that Richard Leese now heads up a “private sector focused partnership” called Manchester at MIPIM, aiming to promote GM to an international audience of property professionals. They organise an entire event space at the conference showcasing 27 events, for which the cheapest advertising package will set you back £6.5K, the most expensive at £18K. 

 

Much like with housing, working out who the cheapest option is affordable to will tell you which kinds of people Leese wants to attract both to MIPIM and to Manchester.

 

Last year, Manchester at MIPIM showcased an exhibition entitled Citizens of MCR, aiming to build a bridge between investors and the very normal Mancunians they like to think they’re helping by throwing cash at our city. One of those people was Karl, who was photographed proudly standing next to a mural he and 30 other artists had made on Ducie Street. Where the other Mancunians were labelled with their occupation, Karl was labelled with ‘homeless street artist’. 

 

This is Manchester afterall, we do things differently here… But there is an acute degree of audacity which allows the leader of the council to crack our city wide open for business in the property and development market via Cannes using a homeless man as a symbol of Normal Manchester. It’s not like GM had the highest number of homeless people die on the streets between 2016-18. 

 

Manchester City Council have rightly come under plenty of fire over the last few years for their reluctance to build either affordable or social housing. In 2018/19, 437 “affordable” units were expected to be delivered in the city centre as per the 20% requirement, when in reality only 16 were built. Section 106 effectively acts as a bribe, giving developers a financial out to building anything affordable and councils justifying themselves with the fact that central government is starving them of funding. 

 

This is true, and in order to solve the housing crisis a commitment needs to be made not only to build council housing, but to properly fund local government to carry out the work. But for a city that seems intent on ridding its centre of social rent tenants and replacing them with those who can get more money squeezed out of them, as seems more and more likely with the Northern Gateway development, cosying up to wealthy investors in Cannes does little to convince us that Leese isn’t actively engaging in social cleansing of the poorest. 

 

Leese’s obsession with having his name attached to a legacy which is seeing Manchester grow frighteningly rapidly in multiple directions will earn him favour with the internationally wealthy. But when the present becomes the past, our city’s radical history will not look kindly on a man who has repeatedly overseen the social cleansing of our city and the displacement of the poor.

 

Beth Redmond is an organiser in the housing movement.