The disastrous LBC interview changes nothing - we need to turn the heat back on the government that caused the housing crisis
Natalie Bennett should have been better prepared. That’s really all there is to take from her interview with LBC yesterday, in which she crumbled under scrutiny of her housing policies. It’s not that the whole Green Party is discredited, or that she is stupid, or that she has her sights set on ‘the economy being wrecked and much-loved traditions destroyed’.
We need a bit of perspective. The Greens have some bad policies and some good ones; as Zoe Williams writes in the Guardian today, Bennett’s main mistake was in trying to answer a question rather than describe her vision. Most politicians skirt around the questions they are asked in interviews, instead reiterating the part they are proudest of again and again. It is certainly not uncommon for interviewers to be unable to get hard figures out of their subjects.
The difference is that normally these evasions are delivered smoothly, and most speakers have been extensively polished by PR teams so that they know not to incriminate themselves with coughs and pauses. Natalie Bennett somehow missed this training and she’s paying the price in jeers from all sides.
But voters should not let the circus distract them from housing policies that desperately need changing.The Conservatives have many policies and plans for housing which ought to be bigger news than the Green leader forgetting her figures.
For example, the vacant building credit that the government introduced in December 2014, exempts any housing developer who turns an empty building into private housing from paying to build further affordable units. So even if the developer is making good profits, they do not have to contribute to affordable housing.
Super-rich investors will profit from the change; among the first to do so are the redevelopers of an apartment block in Mayfair that was bought in 2013 by Abu Dhabi’s investment fund.
And what about Iain Duncan Smith’s plans to ‘gift’ recent benefit claimants with council house as a reward for being in work for one year? There are around 1.7 million people on the social housing waiting list. These are all people badly in need of a home. IDS’s proposal not only lets these people down, but it assumes that unemployed people choose to be so, and that all they need is a financial incentive to get back to work – as if the promise of a steady income and not having to use food banks was not enough.
There is also David Cameron’s proposal to scrap housing benefit for school leavers in a misguided attempt to improve the work ethic of young people. Again, this proposal overlooks all the complex economic reasons people are out of work and assumes the unemployed just can’t be bothered. Anger about this policy came even from within the prime minister’s own party – Health Committee chair Sarah Wollaston told the BBC:
“I would not support personally taking housing benefit from the most vulnerable. I would not personally support taking away housing benefit from the very young.”
House building is also at its lowest level since 1924. Since the last election, an average of just 201 social and affordable homes have been built in each Conservative-held local authority, according to research obtained by Shadow Local Government secretary Hilary Benn, compared with 403 in Labour-held councils.
In London the problem is especially bad, despite the capital’s growing population. According to the last census, London needs at least 40,000 new homes every year just to keep up with this growth, yet in 2010/11 less than half of that number were built.
All over the country people are finding it harder than ever for people to pay their rents, and home ownership is a laughable dream for a whole generation. Worse, homelessness charity Shelter reports that the number of homeless children is at a three-year high. So let’s take the heat off the Green leader for a second and start holding the government who have actually caused these problems to account.
Natalie Bennett apologised for her interview which, to be fair, hasn’t actually hurt anybody. The same cannot be said of the Conservatives, or of the policies they have introduced.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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112 Responses to “Forget Natalie Bennett’s interview from hell, here’s the real problem with housing”
Kevin Stall
It wasn’t the UK that caused the recession, it was the US, but the economies are so interlaced that we got hit by the effect. Clinton changed the banking law that allowed banks to speculate and then Bush furthered loosening it. They still have not been tightened enough to stop it from happening again. The sub prime mortgages started the collapse. These mortgages should have never been given.
Capitalism Didn’t cause it but it did allow it , but we have yet to see a system that doesn’t have economic downturns. Even the user suffered from them. The economic system use to be even worse before central banking with a recession every 7-8 years. Didn’t matter the type government it was, monarchy, capitalism or socialism, they all experience it.
Guest
A market is not offering 10% of value, only *precisely* as demanded rather than what they might actually want to sell.
Moreover, your argument is based on a stereotype.
And I see, what farmland is this in the “middle of towns and cities”?
“It is a loosening proposition for the farmer because of economy of size.”
After you’ve taken their best land (and the accessways for it, etc.) for a pittance for a mansion it is, yes!
(Also, loosing)
Guest
No, trying to force poor people into remote accomodation is not a good idea at all. And now you want shanty wood towns, which is absolutely terrible compared to properly built houses!
Forcing people away from jobs and shops is not a “good” thing, it means they’re isolated and have few options, and those which they do have are more expensive – this to you is a better “quality of living”, “better lives” travelling 4+ hours a day for work, with maybe one expensive local shop…etc.
Commuting is a middle-class thing, the poor can’t afford it. The “fine tuning” you want is “how bad exactly will the isolation and poverty for the poor be?”
(And lose your job? Oops, the JC+ is still 2 hours and £8 in travel away! And under the Government plans, you’ll be there every day. Heck, you’ll be there weekly under UC rules anyway even if you DO have a job…and if it’s in the opposite direction to the job, tough!)
Guest
Only if you devalue it for being farmland in the first place.
You are not talking about “excessive” supply, you’re talking about tiny amounts of housing, in locations attractive only to the top of the middle class.
There won’t be bidders either, remember, you’re using eminent domain at 10% value.
Guest
“Sections” are even more worthless. Moreover, it’s near-impossible to do that sort of connection because of the work involved and maximum capacity on existing lines.
You’re talking about a dribble of a single very specific type of housing. On land paid for at a very low rate and handed over to probably a few large builders. No speculation involved, at all.
You want to delay getting started and starting fixing the real issues for this type of housing, with billions in boondoggle railway to absorb funding which otherwise would have benefited the 99% for a decade and more, like..oh…house building!
Also, the answer is not to be stuck to 300k then, but to start thinking about real answers – mid-rise housing, which means reasonable population density, in brownfield and urban sites. And the odd short-residency (3 years, say) tower block for the under-25’s. Council properties.
Plus a hefty tax on empty property, and another one (rapidly scaling up with time empty) for empty brownfield land – one option always being to surrender the land to the council in lieu of tax, etc.
Effective plans. For the 99%.