It’s great how we all seem to be on first name terms now, dude, with every Think Tank, Dick and Harry scurrying to pen you a little Dear Andy letter. These seem more popular than Dear John letters but are similar in many ways, with individuals and organisations hurriedly writing to distance themselves from their former partners, beliefs and actions (if only you’ll send some government funding their way). It’s not you, it’s them.

Seems to me like a lot of your time is going to be spent reading an influx of these missives, man, probably while listening to a Shakespeare’s Sister playlist and trying to drown them out with a bottle of Malbec, but I urge you to throw most of them in the bin.

The letter-writing problem is particularly acute in the housing sector, man. I don’t know how many of the professionals and organisations writing to you are as big a fan of the BBC series Manctopia as I was (perhaps you could make them put it back on the iPlayer if you become PM, bro).

A lot of the welcoming and petitioning will come from housing associations. About a decade ago, these same groups claimed the cross-subsidy model would work and that they wouldn’t need government money to build the homes the country needs, but here they are at the front of the ‘Dear Andy’ queue with their begging bowls. I just saw their trade body proclaim that a tiny uptick in housing delivery is down to the current government when the funding for them clearly would have been sorted by Michael Gove and all that lot. Either they don’t know how long it takes to build homes or they’re just creeping up to you, my man.

Many of the begging letters seem worthy, like, I don’t know, pal…I’m trying to think of some kind of metaphor…it’s as if there are helpful suggestions, like a national blood drive to restock levels for transfusions, but then you find out the guy who’s written the letter is Count Dracula.

Your immediate problems with housing aren’t just of funding and it’s here I urge you to ignore the mix of salespeople promoting their own solutions and establishment lackeys jostling for your favour in, uh…in favour of doing something usefully radical and putting tenants back alongside these tired institutions. Ever since the coalition government shuttered the National Tenant Voice and Tenant Service Authority, things have been grim out here for us.

It’s not enough to just say you’ll build more social homes, either, my friend. The Grenfell Tower featured a lot of social homes. Awaab Ishak lived in a social home. There are ongoing and repeated reports of rotting, damp and mouldy social homes across the sector that seem to be accelerating as Awaab’s Law and greater awareness of the ombudsman take hold.

Being social homes isn’t an implicit defence against squalor. The tenure isn’t holy water, silver and garlic for tenants, who remain the missing ingredient in all the national and regional discussions about policy for social housing.

You have an opportunity to take a twofold approach to making things better for tenants and communities. One, start up a groovy All Party Parliamentary Group for Tenant Affairs. Get Baroness Taylor and Joe Powell MP on it and some other cool cats, but like other APPGs get them to bring in tenants to set their own agenda. You’ll have to be sly and make sure not all the tenants are suggested by landlord and membership groups; that way disaster lies for establishing independence and managing self-interest.

There should be two groups. One is all polite and sensible and crap like that and has to get their fingers stuck in all the policy pies, instating a level of tenant leadership that sits alongside the Regulator of Social Housing, the ombudsman and all the lobbying types from the housing sector who JUST lobbied to make sure tenants don’t have flooring or furniture. You have to watch out for those snakes, man. This team should be in charge of instating a new, proper Competence and Conduct Standard, instead of the fudge that Starmer’s government have made of it which risks being dangerous and complacent.

The other gang to set up should be a badass squad of tenant vampire-hunters. We keep seeing the same organisations feature in the ombudsman’s maladministration and spotlight reports, but mysteriously have no, or only very quiet, action taken against them by the regulator. It’s time to pull up your big-boy pants, get a little task force like Elliot Ness had, or a flock of Van Helsings, and let them chase down the festering nests of complacency and incompetence in order to drive an – entirely metaphorical – stake through their hearts.

It’ll be good for tenants, and good for the sector at large. The good institutions, and the vast mediocrity of landlords simply not actively doing harm to tenants, keep getting tarred with the same brush as the really bad ones, so it’s in everyone’s interests to get the regulator using its new powers to levy unlimited fines and replace entire boards. They’ve had these powers for two years now and keep not using them. An example must be set. Lines must be drawn. Communities must be reclaimed from the organisations that have, accidentally or otherwise, ended up as heartless corporate megaliths.

Yours faithfully, your new best pal,

A.N. Other.