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England’s top councillor has warned against being too focused on building social rent homes as a means of solving the housing crisis.
James Jamieson, chair of the Local Government Association (LGA) and leader of Central Bedfordshire Council, said he disagreed with the National Housing Federation’s (NHF) Kate Henderson that the need for government investment in social rent is greater than the need for other tenures, such as shared ownership.
The pair were appearing on a panel at the NHF’s National Housing Summit in London today.
Ms Henderson, chief executive of the NHF, said: “We absolutely need to be increasing social rented home development.
“I’m talking about 90,000 a year; last year we built about 6,000. For every one new social home built, eight families were accepted as homeless by their local authorities.
“We have a huge supply challenge on social rent.”
She added: “To deliver the social rent, we do need grant investment, and we need money for shared ownership too, but it’s much less.”
The NHF estimates that England needs 340,000 new homes a year, with 90,000 for social rent, and is calling for annual grant levels of £12.8bn to deliver this ambition.
In response, Mr Jamieson said: “I’m going to slightly disagree with Kate – not on the need for social housing, but fundamentally we’re not delivering enough houses, and if we deliver enough houses, the cost of housing overall will go down in real terms.
“The cost of housing has gone up in real terms almost year-on-year with the odd cycle. We need to do something about this.
“The fundamental cost of housing is too high and whether that is a house to buy, whether it’s a house for shared ownership, whether it’s a house to rent, whether it’s affordable, that’s something we need to address.
“We need to address the quantum of housing, and I don’t think we can become too focused on any one segment of that. If we can deliver enough housing it will benefit all tenures of housing.”
Ms Henderson said she agreed that “we do need to be building all tenures”.
But she added: “There’s all aspects to the housing crisis, but those people who can’t afford a market rent because it’s simply too expensive and they’re never, ever going to be able to obtain a mortgage do need social rented homes and there isn’t a market solution to them – it requires government to invest.”