Activist Kwajo Tweneboa: ‘We’re facing the biggest housing crisis since World War II’
The nation’s highest profile housing campaigner tells Big Issue why building social housing and more tracksuits in parliament can fix the UK’s biggest housing crisis since World War II
If Keir Starmer’s new Labour government fails to take decisive action to end a housing crisis growing for decades, they can’t say they weren’t given every opportunity.
Big Issue’s Blueprint for Change has already laid strong foundations for political leaders to do what generations of MPs have failed to do: ensure everyone has a safe and affordable home.
That won’t be the only plan the prime minister can build on – he’ll have Kwajo Tweneboa’s too.
Britain’s most high-profile housing campaigner now has his own book Our Country in Crisis, which is out just two weeks after the country voted for who would sit in Number 10 for the next five years. The book goes broader than Tweneboa’s own experiences and those of the hundreds of tenants that he has helped hold their landlords’ feet to the fire since rising to fame on social media in 2021.
It is a comprehensive breakdown of the problems with housing in the UK and its causes, from a failure to build much-needed social housing and the impact of Right to Buy, to stigma and housing being treated as a wealth asset rather than a basic necessity.
It also offers solution, while at the heart of the book, much like Tweneboa’s work, are the people living with the everyday horrors of the housing crisis as it exists today.
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“It’s not just a coming-of-age book, but also a manifesto for change,” Tweneboa tells Big Issue.
“If in five years’ time things are completely pear-shaped, nobody can say they weren’t warned.”
It’s been less than three years since Kwajo Tweneboa’s tweet went viral about the horrible conditions he was living in while caring for his terminally ill father on the Eastfields estate in Mitcham, South-West London.
His demand for landlord Clarion to help after months of complaints falling on deaf ears saw him go into his neighbours’ homes and film the conditions they were living in. Then tenants elsewhere got in touch and Tweneboa started calling out failing councils, housing associations and private landlords across the country.
Now he’s a full-time housing campaigner, still fighting for tenants living in misery, giving talks around the UK and lobbying government ministers for change. Ironically enough, a former government cabinet minister has endorsed his book and provided a quote for the sleeve: none other than Michael Gove. The former housing secretary called the book “a must-read for anyone who cares about the state of the nation”.
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It is perhaps testament to how Tweneboa has gone beyond screaming into the Twitter abyss to becoming a respected authority on how to get a grip on a crisis politicians, including Gove, have failed to halt for decades.
“You know what, I was glad and I was surprised. He sent me a really nice message beforehand and said he would really love to write a quote for the book. In all honesty, he didn’t have to,” says Tweneboa.
“I hope now he’s no longer an MP as he’s stepped down, he is more open and critical. He wasn’t your typical right-wing Conservative politician. I think he had common sense and a working pair of eyes and he could see where people were suffering.”
But there’s still no one quite like Kwajo Tweneboa. When Big Issue meets him in Brixton, he’s come straight from helping his mum solve a problem with her home. And in the hour or so he spends with us, he gets a tonne of missed calls and WhatsApp messages. It’s a sign of just how in-demand he is and just how deep the housing crisis goes.
In the time he has been campaigning, private rents have hit record highs, house prices have peaked, mortgages have soared, the number of households living in temporary accommodation has hit new heights and thousands of renters have been evicted from their homes.
In response, the number of homes, particularly much-needed social rent homes, has failed to hit delivery targets, the Renters Reform Bill has collapsed, the target of ending rough sleeping has gone unfulfilled and Grenfell survivors and bereaved families’ wait for justice goes on.
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That offered a grim backdrop during a general election campaign where housing was already down the priority pecking order. Both parties largely focused on home ownership to appeal to voters with precious little commitment to building the 90,000 social rent homes per year needed over the next decade to end the housing crisis, according to Shelter. Neither of the main parties committed to ending Right to Buy either, much to Tweneboa’s chagrin.
People want politicians with integrity and morals, empathy and understanding for what it is they need
Kwajo Tweneboa
It’s a sign that politicians are out of touch, he says, and the class of 2024 need to look back to the days of Beveridge, Attlee and postwar Labour to meet the challenge they face.
“Political parties often worry about winning an election and the next election and the next election and there’s a lot of short-termism,” he says.
“People want delivery. People want stability. People want genuine change for the right reasons. People want politicians with integrity and morals, empathy and understanding for what it is they need behind their closed doors. I think the next government really has an opportunity to change things.
“The state of housing at the moment is the biggest housing crisis we’ve faced arguably since World War II. We’re going to need a similar response, similar to what happened after World War II, which really is going to fix things.”
Kwajo Tweneboa’s book sets out why it doesn’t need to take a war on British soil to fix the housing crisis and why solving it delivers everything the next government should want. How making homes safe and more affordable could shorten NHS waiting lists or boost education to benefit Brits. How more class diversity in Westminster could boost political will to build social housing and stymie the stigma attached to it. The discomfort Tweneboa experienced when in parliament “wearing my Air Maxes and wearing my tracksuit” summed up the disconnect for him.
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Reading his manifesto for change should also instil a sense of anger at how far away we are from fixing housing.
“I want people to understand – even if they’ve not been through it – that it’s completely fucked up what’s happening and what’s happened for so long, how people have been failed,” says Tweneboa.
“A lot of the issues that we see as a society, you can directly link back to housing, especially when it comes to young people, especially when it comes to crime, when it comes to poverty, when it comes to education and healthcare. I want people to really understand that and be angry at what’s happened.
“I’ve said for the last few weeks that the current state of housing, the housing crisis, is the biggest barrier to economic prosperity in this country. I firmly believe that, and if they don’t fix that, they can forget about talking about delivering economic prosperity.”
But, as Britain embarks on a whole new political era, Kwajo Tweneboa is like all of us: hoping for a future where a generation will one day be born without a housing crisis.
“I want people to realise that there are solutions and in a lot of cases it doesn’t cost a lot,” he says. “It starts with getting rid of the stigma that we currently have around housing and social housing, it starts with sitting down and having the right people around the table. And it starts with politicians actually respecting the idea that we need to be speaking to the people affected by the policies that were implemented.
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“And, actually, if they deliver the right things, it’s going to be attractive to their voter base, it’s going to win the election, because people are sick and tired of the same old.”
Our Country in Crisis by Kwajo Tweneboa is out on 18 July (Trapeze, £20). You can buy it from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops
