Posted: October 31, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Budget, Fire safety, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Rents, Right to buy, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
A final verdict will have to wait for the spending review in the Spring but how should we assess the first Labour Budget for 14 years?
The answer of course depends on what you take as your starting point. Compared with the disastrous first Conservative Budget in 2010 or even the first Labour one in 1997, this one takes some definite steps in the right direction.
But does this Budget live up to Labour rhetoric about greater investment and long-term solutions. To what extent will it really ‘fix the foundations’ and deliver ‘the biggest boost to affordable and social housing for a generation’?
Here are 10 key areas that I was looking out for:
1) New social homes: The £500 million top-up to the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) briefed in advanceis welcome news but it must only be a down-payment on a far bigger increase for the next AHP after 2026.
It is at the lower end of expectations of up to £1 billion extra and it will not be enough to make up for a shortfall in delivery caused by construction cost inflation and other pressures on social landlords. The current AHP is on course to deliver between 110,000 and 130,000 affordable homes over five years rather than the 180,000 originally expected while need is estimated at 90,000 social homes a year.
All of which puts the 5,000 the government says will be generated by the top-up into perspective.
Details of ‘future grant investment’ in the next AHP will be set out in the spending review and will support a mix of tenures ‘with a focus on delivering homes for social rent’.
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Posted: October 21, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing benefit, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing
With the days counting down to the Budget and all eyes on the tax increases to come, you’d have to be quite an optimist to expect an immediate boost for housing.
There may be scope for redistribution of some existing budgets but the first fiscal event of the new government is taking place against a gloomy short-term backdrop, with cabinet ministers for unprotected departments reportedly protesting about the cuts they are being expected to take.
The real question for October 30 – and for the Spring spending review to come – is a more long-term one: a shift in thinking about the value of housing investment.
There have already been some hopeful signs on this, with chancellor Rachel Reeves said to be considering a shift in the measure of debt to take account of the value of the assets created by investment as well as the costs. This could create room for billions in extra public investment, but housing would have to join the queue alongside health, education, transport, prisons and all the other government priorities.
If you’re looking for reasons to invest in housing specifically, there is plenty of timely evidence in the new UK Housing Review Autumn briefing paper published this week.
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Posted: October 10, 2024 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: USA |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.
Housing has gained a rare salience in the US presidential election as Americans battle with rising rents and mortgage costs.
The contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is a chance for British observers to go through the looking glass of how housing is done across the Atlantic.
The emphasis on the ‘American dream’ of home ownership will be familiar and a broad alignment is discernible between the Democrats and Labour and the Republicans and Conservatives.
But this is also a very different world in which finance is dominated by tax credits and housing vouchers rather than grant and housing benefit. And it is also one in which race and immigration form a much clearer political dividing line.
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Jules Birch 