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The lack of decent and affordable homes is the great social issue of our times. It affects millions from families living in cramped rented flats to middle-class parents struggling to get children on the property ladder. This shortage needs to go top of the political agenda now.

The current housing market is tailored to suit foreign oligarchs rather than British families. There’s been a lack of political will as well to get more houses get built. For this you can blame the Tories and their Right-to-Buy legacy. It’s bad enough this Thatcher policy divided working-class communities and depleted our social housing stock. But it also put a block on local authorities building new homes - and we’re only now feeling the crisis this created. Thatcher created a demand for home ownership without increasing supply. The result is sky high prices which are unaffordable for young families, especially in London.

Do the Tories care about affordable housing? Of course not. Cameron may have helped trumpet the ‘property-owning democracy’ as ministerial adviser in the 1990s. But he’s now the one ignoring their needs. This is the party which has sold itself to the interests of the filthy rich. The only people Tories listen to are their friends in hedge funds and offshore business. Cameron should listen up though because housing is an issue facing people from Wood Green to Wakefield - and it’s not going away.

It wasn’t so long ago that we all had real opportunities. To make a home through stable long-term renting or owning. To build a sense of place for ourselves and our families. All too often, now, that simply isn’t the case. Enough is enough. We need new homes built, letting agents tackled over their unfair charges, social housing restored for those in need, and affordable housing kept at the top of every council’s priorities. And yet on all these vital measures the Coalition has failed. They’ve presided over the lowest level of house building since the 1920s. Rents are rising quicker than wages for nine million people. The destruction of social housing continues unchecked with the vulnerable failed most. Oh, and it’s not because the Conservative Party has committed itself to some great new hope for folk buying a house, despite the hints in government speeches. They’ve failed them too. Right now it takes the average British family 22 years to save for a deposit on their first home.

This failure is particularly stark in the capital. In fact, a quarter of all Londoners now rent from a private landlord thanks to the gutting of social housing and the rise of buy-to-let. The housing charity Shelter reports that complaints against landlords have risen nearly fifty percent (47%) in the last five years. People renting privately face rising rents and the threat of eviction at just two months’ notice. Labour Assembly member, Tom Copley, has been calling week in week out for Boris Johnson to address the issue.

Tessa Jowell’s campaign – End the Great Housing Giveaway - exposes the Mr Cameron’s latest scandal. Our prime minster wants to remove the requirement for developers to include affordable homes in their redevelopment schemes. How can this be right? This will be a bonanza to developers, deplete affordable housing further still and yet more communities will be broken up. It doesn’t end here.

Across London families and communities are being threatened by the hard, cold face of ‘regeneration’. Million pound homes are marketed to the wealthy elites of the world in the glossy brochures of developers. This is while people are being turfed out of the homes they’ve lived in for decades. But brave people are standing up for their communities. For example an inspiring group of tenants and local residents in Kensington and Chelsea, have formed Save the Sutton Estate to stop their homes being demolished. Built by a Victorian philanthropist, the Sutton Estate is an example of a proper community being torn apart by this government’s policies. Eddie Izzard met the campaigners and was right to say this is a conspiracy by people with cash to keep house prices high. It’s not right. And what did the government do? They gave the bloke who’s trying to bulldoze the estate a CBE.

More campaigns like these are needed to inspire others. And I for one have been inspired. I’ll be talking to people over the next 69 days until the election about Labour’s pledge to build 200,000 homes per year by 2020. Our plans to unblock the new supply of homes by giving councils new powers to tackle empty homes. And also be talking about our pledge to ensure new homes are advertised in the UK first, not overseas.

I’ll also be meeting some of the many local community groups across our capital city that have sprung up to take on the big developers. Standing up against the vested interests of the Tories and the big developers. Standing up for the right to have a place to call home.

Redevelopment has to work for everyone. It can’t simply be about pumping money in, pushing the poor out and making way for the rich. It's our time to show the country what it means to be Labour - and that means supporting decent, affordable homes for all.