Shadow minister sets out plan for vacant properties and pledges building help for councils
Teather: use empty estates for temporary housing
The Liberal Democrat shadow housing minister this week used a much-anticipated speech to condemn the ‘criminal waste’ of empty council housing.
But Sarah Teather also promised her party conference in Bournemouth: ‘We will free councils to build thousands and thousands of extra social homes.’
She claimed that Labour had ‘systematically mugged’ the poorest people, citing the 10p tax, the recent ‘raid’ on the decent homes budget and plans to ‘snatch’ £15 a week from the local housing allowance. And she dismissed the Conservative Party as having ‘nothing to say on housing.’
She said she feared the recession would leave whole estates of empty homes, as regeneration schemes stalled after residents had left. ‘We could use these estates for short-life housing to help a young person on low wages get a temporary helping hand,’ she told delegates. ‘Or we could do what Labour [in] Tower Hamlets did: pour concrete down the toilets to stop squatters and leave estates to ruin.’
Long-term empty council homes could be offered cheaply to first-time buyers who were willing to do the necessary renovation work themselves, she suggested.
And she called for the government to raise standards in the private rented sector, by cutting VAT on repair and renewal, offering tax relief on property improvements, and attracting institutional investment. ‘For too long government has worshipped at the altar of homeownership at the expense of everything else,’ she said.
But in both her speech to conference and at fringe events, Ms Teather emphasised her view that the solution to the housing crisis was increased supply - particularly of council-built homes.
She told Inside Housing it was essential councils were able to borrow but she was ‘not convinced’ the government’s plan to reform local authority housing finance by redistributing housing debt among councils was ‘the cheapest way of doing it’.
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat treasury spokesperson Vince Cable laid out plans for an increase of 0.5 per cent in council tax levied on the value of any property worth more than £1 million. He said this would allow the party to raise the tax threshold to £10,000, allowing it to lift 4 million people out of paying tax altogether.
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Readers' comments (2)
Harry Lime | 25/09/2009 8:36 am
Ah, yet more political kite flying during the conference "silly season". For one, often these areas are so run down even if the properties were of a decent standard you'd be hard pressed to get someone in very real need to move in willingly, and then if you did move someone in, you're left with a headache about moving them on when the recovery (if it ever) comes, you can guarantee social workers etc would come up with many reasons why the initial promise of short term housing means the councils should then provide move on accommodation....
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Jim Paton | 26/09/2009 5:57 pm
Harry Lime isn't entirely right. Moving people into empty homes can transform an area. But he has put his finger on the central problem. Short-life housing is simply stacking up the problem of what happens when the places go back. Mass homelessness and a scattering of suicides, that's what. Has nothing been learned from the '70s and '80s?
I spent 26 years on the short-life treadmill with no prospect of housing security, regular eviction scares, and being snubbed by the council and the ward councillors on the grounds we were “not local people”. Teetering on the verge of homelessness (again) for years on end, being unable to put down roots, being told you don’t belong, takes a huge psychological toll. Private tenants know all about this. Do we want to drag more people into that mess?
Short-life housing is viable only if there is a clear route out.
The only alternative is to confine short-life to relatively privileged bright young things who will be able to rehouse themselves with daddy's money. That means, of course, the single people in most housing need are just left out.
Not thought through!
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