Labour may fail to build much-needed social homes. Is this the reason?
According to the BBC, housebuilders have planning permission for thousands of homes that could count towards the 1.5 million that Labour has vowed to build over the next five years – but they cannot start work because no housing providers will buy the finished properties; they don’t have the money.
Housing associations, for example,
are mostly not-for-profit organisations that buy up affordable properties and rent them as social homes to low income tenants at discounted rates, receiving a government subsidy to do so.
They’re having to spend more money on repairing the homes they already own, they say – meaning less to spend on buying new properties.
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In the aftermath of the Grenfell fire, the owners of buildings found to contain unsafe cladding have spent billions of pounds replacing it.
The National Housing Federation (NHF), which represents housing associations, estimates it will cost their members £6bn.
They also say they are spending more money on fixing damp problems following the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died of breathing problems caused by mould.
Prevention is better than cure; perhaps these organisations should have considered what they were doing when they decided to buy cheap, flammable cladding for their buildings, and when they neglected the damp problems causing black mould inside them.
They are also earning less from rents, it seems, because the former (Tory) government has been cutting and capping the rent paid by social housing tenants.
So they’ve had to pay out £6 billion to replace the cladding and remove the mould, while losing £3 billion in rent revenue.
And frequently-changing rent levels mean they can’t budget for the future.
But the new homes are desperately-needed because councils say they are going bankrupt putting homeless families in temporary accommodation.
They’re spending £1 billion a year on this, meaning they can’t afford to buy the new properties being offered by housebuilders.
Oh, and the housebuilders themselves aren’t offering social landlords what they need. It seems they are determined to provide one-bedroom flats when family homes are required.
Housebuilders say they have planning permission from councils and varying this would be costly; housing associations say they should have been involved in the process from the start, if builders had planned to sell the properties on to them.
(And in fairness, This Writer can remember there being a need for one-bedroom flats after the Tories brought in the Bedroom Tax that penalised social renters for living in accommodation with more bedrooms than they needed.)
Solutions are being mooted but none of them seem good.
This is the ultimate, disastrous result of Margaret Thatcher’s “right to buy” scheme that forced councils to sell off much of their housing stock in the 1980s.
Thatcher bribed the electorate with nonsense talk about the UK becoming a “nation of homeowners” – which didn’t happen. Instead, the former council houses were bought up by private landlords who charged high rents and cared not a jot about making people homeless – causing the problems we are seeing today.
The media, and many others, praised Thatcher at the time. How myopic they all were.
Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s “New Labour” governments of 1997-2010 could have reversed the situation, restoring social housing – but they didn’t, because they had adopted her neoliberal economic policies.
And now Keir Starmer is prime minister – and he is a confirmed Blairite (and therefore Thatcherite in his economic thinking).
His philosophy won’t allow him to do what is necessary – fund the gaps in cashflow and put in place the necessary mechanisms to ensure that providers get the assets they need.
What will he do – if anything?
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Labour may fail to build much-needed social homes. Is this the reason?
Labour may fail to build much-needed social homes. Is this the reason?
According to the BBC, housebuilders have planning permission for thousands of homes that could count towards the 1.5 million that Labour has vowed to build over the next five years – but they cannot start work because no housing providers will buy the finished properties; they don’t have the money.
Housing associations, for example,
Buy Cruel Britannia in print here. Buy the Cruel Britannia ebook here. Or just click on the image!
Prevention is better than cure; perhaps these organisations should have considered what they were doing when they decided to buy cheap, flammable cladding for their buildings, and when they neglected the damp problems causing black mould inside them.
They are also earning less from rents, it seems, because the former (Tory) government has been cutting and capping the rent paid by social housing tenants.
So they’ve had to pay out £6 billion to replace the cladding and remove the mould, while losing £3 billion in rent revenue.
And frequently-changing rent levels mean they can’t budget for the future.
But the new homes are desperately-needed because councils say they are going bankrupt putting homeless families in temporary accommodation.
They’re spending £1 billion a year on this, meaning they can’t afford to buy the new properties being offered by housebuilders.
Oh, and the housebuilders themselves aren’t offering social landlords what they need. It seems they are determined to provide one-bedroom flats when family homes are required.
Housebuilders say they have planning permission from councils and varying this would be costly; housing associations say they should have been involved in the process from the start, if builders had planned to sell the properties on to them.
(And in fairness, This Writer can remember there being a need for one-bedroom flats after the Tories brought in the Bedroom Tax that penalised social renters for living in accommodation with more bedrooms than they needed.)
Solutions are being mooted but none of them seem good.
This is the ultimate, disastrous result of Margaret Thatcher’s “right to buy” scheme that forced councils to sell off much of their housing stock in the 1980s.
Thatcher bribed the electorate with nonsense talk about the UK becoming a “nation of homeowners” – which didn’t happen. Instead, the former council houses were bought up by private landlords who charged high rents and cared not a jot about making people homeless – causing the problems we are seeing today.
The media, and many others, praised Thatcher at the time. How myopic they all were.
Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s “New Labour” governments of 1997-2010 could have reversed the situation, restoring social housing – but they didn’t, because they had adopted her neoliberal economic policies.
And now Keir Starmer is prime minister – and he is a confirmed Blairite (and therefore Thatcherite in his economic thinking).
His philosophy won’t allow him to do what is necessary – fund the gaps in cashflow and put in place the necessary mechanisms to ensure that providers get the assets they need.
What will he do – if anything?
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Join the uPopulus group at https://upopulus.com/groups/vox-political/
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
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