Property and the political elite

Posted: November 24, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Equality, Housing market, Mansion tax, Tax | Tags: | 7 Comments

It’s now received wisdom, and a key part of UKIP’s appeal, that we are ruled by politicians who are out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. How much of this is down to house prices?

Perceived divisions between politicians and voters are nothing new of course. Nor are accusations of champagne (or Islington/Hampstead) socialism and a huge gap between Labour leaders and their core vote. However, if these are US-style ‘culture wars’ over the politics of identity and national flags, they are being fought in the language of house prices, as shown only too clearly in this week’s Mail on Sunday story about the ‘Thornberry set’ and the North London ‘liberal elite’.

The issue was highlighted by last week’s tweet by Labour MP Emily Thornberry about a flag-festooned house in Rochester & Strood and then brought home by media coverage of its Sun-sponsored owner knocking on the door of her ‘£2 million house’ in Richmond Crescent in Islington. This street is iconic in New Labour circles because it’s where Tony and Cherie Blair lived immediately before they won the 1997 election. Former Islington council leader turned Labour MP and chair of the Public Accounts Committee Margaret Hodge still lives there. This is a street of seriously big North London houses but they weren’t always worth in the millions.

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Unequal shares: All that is Solid

Posted: February 25, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Equality, Housing market, Tax | Tags: , | Leave a comment

What if our real housing problem is not a lack of a new homes but the distribution of the ones we already have?

That’s the key premise of All that is Solid: the Great Housing Disaster, an intriguing new book published this week by Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at Oxford University. In it he attacks not just the ‘yes to homes’ consensus about the solution to the housing crisis but the actions of just about all the key people involved. Politicians, housebuilders, landlords and property journalists are all seen as part of the problem but housing associations, the CIH and the voluntary sector also come under fire for accepting the status quo.

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Rights row: the UN and housing

Posted: February 4, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Bedroom tax, Equality, Social housing, Welfare reform | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Seeing ourselves as others see us can be an uncomfortable experience and so it is proving for ministers responding to United Nations special rapporteur Raquel Rolnik.

Her preliminary report in September called for the abolition of the bedroom tax and prompted a furious row with Conservative party chairman and former housing minister Grant Shapps. Now his ‘woman from Brazil’ is back with a final report that uses the approved Conservative term ‘removal of the spare room subsidy’ but still recommends that it ‘should be suspended immediately and be fully re-evaluated in light of the evidence of its negative impacts on the right to adequate housing and general well-being of many vulnerable individuals and households’. You can read the full report here [downloads Word doc].

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