Joy Morrissey is one of the three shortlisted Conservative London mayoral candidates. An Ealing councillor representing Hanger Hill ward since 2014, she was a parliamentary candidate in the 2017 General Election. She was also a London Assembly candidate in 2016, representing the Conservative London mayoral candidate in two high-profile London housing hustings.
Morrissey is running against Shaun Bailey, deputy leader of the London Assembly Conservatives and Andrew Boff, who has been a London Assembly member since 2008. The winner is expected to be announced by the beginning of October following a vote by Conservative party members in London and will then go head-to-head with current mayor Sadiq Khan.
Why are you running to be mayor of London?
Why would I do this to myself? I ask myself that every day. I am obsessed with finding affordable housing solutions for young professions and working families in London. I started looking at the wider issues of London and considered doing a doctorate in housing. Then this mayoral application came up and I thought it would be a great way of promoting some of my housing policy ideas. No matter how far I get, I can at least publicise and raise some of my concerns and ideas for housing.
What is your manifesto?
A London for everyone. As well as housing, I want to tackle youth knife crime and take a more holistic approach, and I want to increase transport links around London. What people want from the mayor, I feel, is an affordable place to live, a Tube journey that gets them to work on time, and to live in an area where they feel safe when they walk home. If the mayor can make those things better for people in London, then I think he or she has done a good job and that is what I want to do.
As a politician, what inspired you to focus on housing?
As a councillor, I just kept seeing all these families who had jobs and who were working hard but who were getting evicted, some of them through no fault of their own, from their private rented accommodation. There is no recourse to help them until they declare themselves homeless, which means they get put into this long spiral of temporary accommodation. It’s really awful for the kids, it’s very traumatic.
One family I was helping in particular provided me with one of those life-changing moments. They were evicted and put into a B&B while the council looked for accommodation for them. Their accommodation was disgusting, they had two rooms in a house occupied by multiple families, and there were bugs everywhere. I thought, “This is awful, this could be me and we need to find a solution for the thousands of people trapped in accommodation like this.”
What solutions or ideas do you have for the UK housing sector?
I think we need to see more community investments rather than turning over land to developers for the greatest possible upfront gains. This could involve a partnership between pension funds and the council. Instead of having a developer, the council could use a contractor.
Pension funds need to have a long-term yield of investment. With a long-term property yield, they could get that same 3% return on investment through property as they could in any other investment. The reason there is a convergence of interest is because the funds have an interest in long-term, high-quality properties because they want people to stay as long as possible. Therefore, it is not in their interest to build shoddy, poorly constructed new-builds.
This would be for thousands of people trapped in temporary accommodation as well as other renters. You could do this as a form of social housing, with a fixed rent. I do not think the pension funds like how far I go with advocating fixed rents and tenants living there indefinitely, but I think you have to give people security of tenure and create a mix of social and private housing.
I work closely with Crisis as well – it does a fantastic job and I support its approach for tackling homelessness. I would like to see some of its policies enacted by whoever the mayor is.
What is your edge against your two Conservative mayoral candidate competitors on housing?
I am a private renter – I do not know how many other Conservative mayor candidates can say that. I am young enough with a family to know exactly what the struggles of living in London are. I love London but it is about making London affordable for everyone and helping people who are living in London get on the housing ladder, using shared ownership schemes or just having more secure places to live, as they do in Germany, where there are just as many places available to rent as own, which takes away the stigma.
You were appointed this year to be the Conservative Policy Forum’s “champion for social housing tenants”. What does this involve?
I think they made that role for me because I came in continuously advocating for a group that maybe was not our traditional base – but it is a group that has been quite receptive to me. For example, I was the first Conservative elected to the Acton Vale estate management committee in East Acton. Back when we had a Conservative MP in Ealing I was their community outreach worker – my job was to go around the estates and community groups and organise apprenticeship fairs. I also organised a Somalian community day and I’ve been friends with the Somalian community ever since.
The champion role involves going to speak to different tenants and raising awareness within the party about social housing and about how housing and inequality affects everyone. No matter what your income is, particularly in London, you’re going to be affected by the housing crisis. If you’re not, your children will be, because you may be an affluent middle-class person but your kids might be able to afford only a bedroom in a house share.
All the Conservative mayoral candidates voted for Brexit in the referendum. How will you reconcile that, given that London overwhelmingly voted against Brexit?
I have thought of that and that is why I have Stephen Hammond [Conservative MP for Wimbledon] as my campaign chair. He was an adamant remainer. However, it doesn’t matter how you voted, it’s about what will be the best for London. Stephen has come in to help organise my campaign and be that established voice for my campaign. For me it is about having a unified approach for London, whatever that means, and I’m very passionate about reflecting the views of London.
To send feedback, e-mail anna.ward@egi.co.uk or tweet @annaroxelana or @estatesgazette
