Axing of housing regeneration scheme could set communities back a decade
Graham Jones, Labour MP for Hyndburn, reports on why the government’s abolition of the housing regeneration scheme riskes setting back communities by a decade.
housing
Housing – a fault line between London and the devolved bodies
Just days after the government’s controversial localism bill, tenants in Wales and Scotland have received welcome news, writes Ed Jacobs.
Is Simon Hughes Britain’s most confused politician?
Following Evan Harris’s bizarre claim last week that the only way to get rid of fees was to “vote more Liberal Democrats into power”, Simon Hughes yesterday said he “would have liked to have voted against” fees – but didn’t, just as he threatened to vote against the VAT rise in the Budget but failed to do so, and as he threatened to do over the government’s housing benefit cuts.
Coalition’s housing plans will disincentivise aspiration
There is a sound argument to try to support greater mobility in social housing – only five per cent of social tenants moved home over the past year compared to almost a quarter of tenants in the private sector, though it is unclear what an ‘optimal’ level would be. It is also important to emphasise that it is councils and housing associations that will decide the length of tenancies, so the key question is how they will use their new freedoms.
No new social homes planned for at least four years
Our nation faces an unprecedented housing crisis. More than 4.5m people are languishing on waiting lists. Around 2.5m people are living in cramped and overcrowded conditions. And to top it all off, the Government has unleashed a programme of housing benefit cuts that could force hundreds of thousands of people out of their homes, leaving many at risk of ending up on the streets.
Government plans to build more affordable housing risk falling short
Government projections show there will be more than 250,000 new households every year over the decade to 2020, the result of growth in the number of single person households, increasing life expectancy and net migration. Building 110,000 new homes in 2009 clearly falls far short of this.
Who will be affected by the housing benefit cuts?
Welfare systems need to address two different types of situation faced by working age households. They need to provide short-to-medium term support for living costs in response to labour market fluctuations and frictional unemployment; and longer term support for those who are without a market income for extended periods (in practice many households are located on a continuum between these two poles).
CSR could herald the slow death of affordable housing
The Comprehensive Spending Review, followed up by a letter from the Minister for Housing to local authorities, together herald the near collapse of affordable housing policy in the UK. For the most expensive parts of the country like London, they could herald the slow death of affordable housing altogether.
An Englishman’s home is his rabbit hutch
To better understand housing, ministers should be obliged to live for part of the year in new build homes that they have forced on the rest of the country.
Healey lambasts ‘New Homes Bonus’ scheme
In a speech today to the Labour Party conference, John Healey set out a detailed critique of the Coalition’s ‘New Homes Bonus’ scheme. He argued it will “blow out of the water” George Osbourne’s promise of a council tax freeze in many areas.