Chris Webb
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Comments (7)
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Comment on: One million children in overcrowded homes
True Phoenix, but why are you assuming that all the overcrowded families live in the social housing sector. Indeed, because of the low availability of affordable homes families have purchased homes too small for their needs, or rent privately, again too small for their needs. Their needs have not always arisen after being housed, indeed often before. This is as much about poverty than anything else. Poverty removes choice and lack of choice causes hardship.
It is easy for those with choices to bemoan the lack of responsibility of those without, I think its called ignorance. -
Comment on: One million children in overcrowded homes
Hey Ian - great to see that bigots are alive and well - perhaps there should be a compulsory sterilisation of anyone earning below £24kpa. How about all those disabled types taking up the homes that others could use, and what about johnie foreigner.
A large proportion of the Housing Corporation's targets of late have been unit based, ignoring the fact that the met targets hid the fact that family homes were not being provided. The high land values fed by boomenomics has made it not cost effective to build family units for social let.
This is just another example of the error of treating housing as a commodity. -
Comment on: Aviva to launch private rented sector fund
When New Towns were being developed, local businesses invested in the development of housing and community facilities. The homes were rented along with the rest of the Corporation stock. The investors retained the freehold, plus in some cases the right to use as short term lets for housing transiant workers.
As this scheme will be part public funded, will a ceiling will be placed on rents to ensure that they are affordable, and not 'market affordable' but real people level affordable? I doubt it, as it would not be atttractive to the investors.
Anything that assists in housing availability is good, but we must stop treating people's homes as commodities. -
Comment on: Experts seek to end boom and bust
Pre-1945, extensive private letting, poor home conditions except in the homes of the affluent. Limit of supply enabled hovels to be rented for profit.
1950’s, 60’s and 70s, as a result of massive house building programmes, the supply of affordable and respectable homes matching demand, admitting that some of the experimental house designs were failures. Extent of supply prohibited hovels to be rented for profit, but families were housed in weeks rather than years in homes that meant their wages were sufficient for a reasonable standard of living.
1980’s, the building of affordable home restricted and the social housing stock stealth privatised. Limit of supply led to profiteering and the return of hovels being rented for profit. Ever larger portions of income required to sustain housing costs.
This decade, demand allowed to outstrip supply, affordable housing supply at record lows, private rented sector most profitable since the 1930’s. Two wages per household required as a minimum to sustain housing costs.
It does not take an academic to realise the cause of the failure to achieve a sustainable housing market. Supply versus demand, profit maximisation, and treating housing as a commodity rather than a necessity. -
Comment on: Immigrants 'do not get unfair access to social housing'
Quite right ILAG, but you miss the point that the Germans have an extensive set of rules and regulations (well they would wouldn't they) that control the market, delivering long term leasing, affordable rents, and enable mobility. They also control quality and supply, and provide stable subsidy. Variants of this operate across Europe, reducing the need for direct state provisions.
In free-market Britain the lack of such controls, in the interest of ensuring maximum profit can be made from private housing, the need for affordable state sector housing is essential. The idea of rampent house inflation is foreign outside of Britain, which is hardly surprising.
No doubt ILAG would prefer to limit demand rather than increase supply. Historically, that has done every country that followed such philosophy great harm indeed.
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Posts (2)
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Posted in: John Healey interview
To many social homes have been lost, and many of those sold under right to buy are now part of the growing property portfolios of private landlords, being rented back to Council's at inflated rents.
In the interest of putting social need ahead of personal greed, will you bring an end to the Right to Buy and replace it with a Discount Compensation Scheme through which a proportion of lifetime rent paid can be given as a property purchase grant for use in the purchase of a private sector property? This would ensure that no further family social housing units were lost, preserving the ability of local authorities to house those in greatest need.
Will you also look into banning the ability of a Leaseholder owning more than one leasehold property. It is a travesty that in London particularly, homes developed with the benefit of social housing grant have been hoovered up by speculators who are effectively profiteering through government grant, whilst the families originally intended to benefit from the grant are left paying market rents. -
Posted in: John Healey interview
Part of the Labour package post-war was the concept of the right to housing. This was understood as a decent quality affordable home.
For the past 25 years housing has been treated as a commodity.
Does New Labour have any future plans to return to enabling a right to housing that it's political parent once held as a foudation stone of social justice?