Vampire diaries

Posted: May 8, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing finance, Private renting, Social housing | Leave a comment

The maths involved in the CLG committee’s new report on the financing of new housing supply is depressingly simple.

Add newly arising need to cope with population growth (232,000 homes a year on the latest estimate) to the backlog of existing need (1.99 million households in 2009), then take away the completions in 2011 (109,000) and you are left with a huge gap in provision. Even if private housebuilders succeed in increasing their output from last year’s miserable 82,000 to the maximum they managed over the last 20 years of 150,000 (a very big if) the gap will still be huge and the backlog will still be growing.

Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.

Disenfranchised by the housing system

Posted: May 2, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Private renting | 4 Comments

As Britain votes in local elections this week, spare a thought for the people who are effectively disenfranchised by the housing system. The total already runs into millions and the problem is set to get much worse.

It stems from the seemingly unstoppable growth of the housing tenure – private renting – in which people are least likely to register to vote. According to the latest estimate, there are 3.6 million private renting households in England. With an estimated 2.3 people in each of those households that gives a total of 8.3 million people. About a million of those households are couples with children or lone parents, but that still leaves perhaps 6.5 million people of voting age plus perhaps another 1.5 million in Scotland and Wales.

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Stat attack

Posted: May 1, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Housebuilding, Private renting | Leave a comment

It’s Communities and Local Government questions – so it must time for a barrage of contradictory statistics.

I’ve grown used to the trading of numerical insults every few weeks between coalition and opposition over the last year or so. But would a week in which politics has been dominated by a stat (the 0.2 per cent fall in GDP that means the UK is in a double dip recession) make any difference?

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.

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