Locals should be paid to approve homes
Housing developers should be able to offer cash incentives to local people in exchange for new house building in their area, an influential think tank has suggested.
A report from Policy Exchange proposes an overhaul of housing policy, which it says could save around £20 billion a year in lower housing benefit costs and by encouraging unemployed social tenants into work.
It demands the government quadruple the number of new social homes built each year to 100,000, and adopt a policy of stable prices for housing.
The planning system should be reformed so local residents can approve or reject proposed developments through ballots. People who vote in favour of developments which go on to be approved could earn financial rewards for themselves, the report suggests.
Social rent would become mortgage payments as part of a ‘path to ownership’ for social tenants, with rent and mortgage payments used to service government bonds financing more social homes.
The Conservative Party proposed a cash incentive scheme in its planning green paper published before the general election.
The report’s author, Alex Morton, said: ‘There are many hidden costs for taxpayers behind the recent surge in house prices. It has caused big increases in housing benefit plus soaring waiting lists for social housing and ever more demand for heavily subsidised “affordable homes”.
‘Falling homeownership has also meant a more unequal society and tension between generations.’
Policy Exchange deputy director Natalie Evans said: ‘Having stable house prices will save everyone money. But for that to happen, we need to make it easier to build houses.
‘So there needs to be major reform of the planning system, such as allowing developers to offer local residents a say and financial incentives to approve development near them.’
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Readers' comments (12)
kass | 31/08/2010 10:03 am
If the so-called authorities are really into enabling tenants in any way and stop talking bull, they should either or:
1) re-introduce secure tenancies:
2) rents become mortgage payments so tenants would own their home at some point;
I would prefer the 1) as it would insure a healthy social housing stock for the country. However each of these alternatives would give residents some stake and long term interest and a sense of security in their homes.
The 3) alternative if to give good incentives to any tenant buying on the private market or moving into a new-built housing.
These are practical and EFFECTIVE ways to make social housing work for its residents. As it is now social residents are only used by their landlords and political authorities to play footbal with them for no other reason than to keep their careers going at the waste of so much public money.
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Harry Lime | 31/08/2010 10:15 am
Sorry Kass, there's no way I can see the option of rent payments being some sort of Mortgage payments, as an extremely large number of social rented properties are paid for by HB how would that work, would the state be "gifting" them the property, would you have to divorce HB payments from personal rent? Also if this was implemented you really would have people in a "race to the bottom" to get social housing.
I don't say this flippantly but there would be quite a few peole prepared to make themselves homeless temporarily in order to get the priority that would allow them to access a home that would eventually become theirs (or a large proportion of it) after merely paying rent figures. If you have people paying £4/500 rent and many others paying £7/800+ for their mortgage it's not difficult to see what the sense of injustice might be.
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Melvin Bone | 31/08/2010 10:18 am
Kass, have you ever considered writing Science Fiction?
Your ideas are far fetched enough.
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Sidney Webb | 31/08/2010 10:37 am
Legalisation of bribary - interesting. I know the coalition wantsed to get rid of laws, but this may be going a bit far.
The idea reminds me of planning meetings for a social housing development next door to an exclusive private housing development. The Nimbys came out with all the sort of drivel that you can still read on this site from the guardians of wisdom in Islington. They even insisted that an 8ft wall was built around the development in case the damned tenants were to escape. Once the development was completed the jealous owners complained that the tenants' houses were built to a superior specification to their own. They then complained that they had seen tenants walking to the local shops and even driving their cars along the public highway - shocking!
And now we are supposed to pay these self centred, selfish, bigots so they stop their winging and whining. They forget that they or their parents benefited from social housing before it became considered the scurge of the economy and against choice for people to live in it. Stable communities, economic stability, social cohesion, all stem from quality and affordable housing, within which social housing plays the foundation stone. Paying people to agree to required housing would be a wasted expense that is better spent on building homes.
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Harry Lime | 31/08/2010 10:38 am
Oops, meant to post this here instead of other story....
Policy Exchange are undoubtedly the precursors of eventual coalition (tory) policy. One of the "nice" outcomes for this would be that the biggest surpluses to be achieved will be in high value areas where developers are likely to build executive style housing. This policy would probably enable developers to bypass affordable housing and give the residents a good few years of council tax bills being covered - cheers, G&T's all round. Whereas in lower value areas the schemes will barely "wash their face" and as such surpluses would be neglible so the "bribe factor will not be as high, so locals may well vote against such schemes - bad times......
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Junior | 31/08/2010 11:45 am
Well from what I see of the new builds in East London I wouldn't want to buy one of them cardboard boxes houses or flats and again whom you going to sue in the build after a number of years not up to scatch. I been around and seen some badly designed property's and not standing the test of time with the materials used on the builds. I know from talking to people on the Shared Ownership ladder cannot afford to pay for exterior repairs or painting.
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Chris | 31/08/2010 11:55 am
And now, from the cash-strapped government who will not throw money at a problem, we have the creation of the Nimby Bonus. Absolute Balls, as some of the prospective Labour leaders might say!
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gordon thompson | 31/08/2010 12:31 pm
I think you should read the Policy Exchange paper in full. Its about much more that bribery. For example, its suggesting that Housing Associations hand to Government all stock which they have accrued as result of transfers since 1997 on the basis that the Government will own it going forward and encourage the occupant to purchase it on a sort of pathway to ownership programme. It does rather lamely add that this would not be nationalisation, just a sort of middleman redistributing the propoerties (another term could be 'spiv'). I am surprised that Inside Housing (and other media sources haven't picked up on this - but I suppose if its not in the press release the journalists cant be expected to read any further...
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Anonymous | 31/08/2010 12:42 pm
Well spotted, Gordon.
The PE paper is the big one. Jules Birch has a good take on it and manages to stay objective.
What on earth is IH leading with Balls. Does it think its audience is Christopher Webb.
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Chris | 31/08/2010 2:09 pm
I'm both flattered and honoured to be so important and so representative of the majority, that IH is now dedicated to producing articles to both please and support me.
I'd like to include so many others in my achievement of this award, but frankly, it would take too long to list them all.
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