Double vision
Posted: October 28, 2014 Filed under: Television, Universal credit, Welfare reform | Tags: Channel 4 1 CommentUniversal credit came under scrutiny on TV and radio last night and whether you look from above or below things are not looking good.
Dispatches on Channel 4 covered the problems from below by looking at the experience in Warrington, where the job centre was one of the first to pilot the new all-in-one benefit. We heard from a succession of people whose claims were delayed, or processed wrongly or were simply not told what was happening and from Golden Gates Housing Trust on the problems this has caused.
The pilots are of course only meant to cover the simplest cases. However, single people don’t necessarily stay single: Jay moved in with his girlfriend and baby and found himself in a nightmare of delayed payments and rent arrears. ‘Me, my partner and my child will be homeless and you just don’t know what’s going on,’ he said. Jay started off as a fan of universal credit but they survived on coffee and crisps until the problems were sorted out.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Brave new world
Posted: October 27, 2014 Filed under: Affordable housing, Economics, Help to Buy, Housebuilding | Tags: financial instruments, National Audit Office Leave a commentGuess what the total value of government financial instruments to support new homes will be by 2021.
The answer that leapt off the page at me in a report on the department’s performance published by the National Audit Office (NAO) last week is a cool £24 billion. And that is just the direct support that comes under the DCLG and its agencies.
Perhaps the figure should not come as a surprise. After all, ever since the financial crisis we’ve grown used to the government adopting new ways of financing things that do not rely on conventional spending or borrowing.
The three programmes that make up the £24 billion are £10 billion for financial guarantees to housing associations and the private rented sector to help build new homes, £9.7 billion for the Help to Buy equity loan scheme (HTB1) and £4.2 billion for other loans and investments such as Build to Rent and the large sites scheme.
Poverty prism
Posted: October 22, 2014 Filed under: Poverty Leave a commentOriginally posted on my blog for Inside Housing.
Who said this? ‘What is currently happening in the housing market epitomises our concerns about Britain becoming a permanently divided nation.’
This is not a quote from a housing pressure group or a think-tank or even an article in Inside Housing. Instead it is the verdict in a report published on Monday by an official government body: the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission.
The advance headlines ahead of its annual State of the Nation report were about the ‘under-30s being priced out of the UK’ and much of the coverage after that went to the commission’s criticism of Labour’s plans on the minimum wage and its proposal to ban unpaid internships. However, read as a whole the report gives a fresh perspective on problems that are all too familiar to anyone in housing.
Taxing problems
Posted: October 14, 2014 Filed under: Housing market, Tax 1 CommentCould we invent a worse system of taxing housing than the one we have now?
As modest attempts at reform are made to howls of protest from those who stand to lose out, it’s worth standing back a moment to reflect on what we tax (and why) and what we don’t.
We have an annual tax on the value of all homes but the council tax in England and Scotland is based on property values as they were in 1991 with a top band of just £320,000. The owner or tenant of a modest semi in Wolverhampton can end up paying more than an oligarch with a multi-million pound home in Westminster. The system was designed to narrow the differences between the top and the bottom from the start but failure to uprate it in line with house prices has amplified the distortions.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
The H word
Posted: October 9, 2014 Filed under: Housebuilding | Tags: Lib Dems, Nick Clegg 1 CommentNick Clegg’s failure to mention housing in his leader’s speech feels like a suitably downbeat conclusion to the final party conference season before the election.
As I blogged earlier in the week, on paper the Lib Dems have the best housing policies of any of the mainstream parties. A target of 300,000 homes a year, a housing investment bank and powers for local authorities to suspend the right to buy will please most people reading this. A succession of MPs, including all three of Clegg’s potential successors, made all the right noises about housing on the conference floor and in countless fringe meetings.
So does it matter that Clegg failed to use the H word?
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Starter’s orders
Posted: October 3, 2014 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Housing market | Tags: Conservative conference, David Cameron 1 CommentWho did David Cameron have in mind when he talked about the ‘vested interests’ that are blocking new homes?
Given the effort that goes in to honing a conference speech to get the messages exactly right, and the fact that the prime minister was reading from an autocue rather than speaking without notes like Ed Miliband, it seems safe to assume that he meant exactly what he said. Here’s what he told the Conservative conference this week:
‘For those wanting to buy a home, yes – we will help you get on that housing ladder…but only if we take on the vested interests, and build more homes – however hard that is.’
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing