Frustrated hopes
Posted: July 6, 2015 Filed under: Housing associations, Legal, Shared ownership Leave a commentFirst posted on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing on July 6
What’s stopping shared ownership from fulfilling its potential as the fourth housing option?
Ever since it was launched, shared ownership has seemed to promise more than it delivers to people who can’t afford full ownership, want something better and more affordable than private renting and want something more or don’t qualify for social housing. Its part-rent, part-buy status and the fact that it requires less grant than social housing have ensured support from both Conservative and Labour governments and it’s become increasingly important to the finances of the providers that offer it. Yet somehow something is missing.
It’s a conundrum the government is trying to resolve through changes introduced in April and a review of longer term options out this summer. It would do well to take heed of a new report from Bristol, Kent and York universities and the Leverhulme Trust launched at an event at the House of Lords last week that I chaired.
From a wider policy perspective, shared ownership has huge potential. As Lord Best put it at the launch, we could create three to four times more home owners through shared ownership than through the Right to Buy.
Chance of a lifetime
Posted: June 27, 2014 Filed under: Affordable housing, Bedroom tax, Cornwall, Second homes, Shared ownership | Tags: Andrew George 1 CommentMPs will get the chance to back major housing reforms including new significant exemptions to the bedroom tax later this year. Will they take it?
Andrew George, the Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, has what he describes as ‘the chance of a lifetime’ to change things through legislation after coming first in the ballot for private member’s bills. Talking to him yesterday gave me a fascinating but slightly depressing insight into how the system – and party politics – work.
He consulted his constituents on a shortlist of options including housing, a Cornish Assembly and health care standards and after more than 2,000 comments has decided to plump for an Affordable Homes Bill with four key elements:
- Extension of Help to Buy or a new Affordable Homes Investment Bank to underpin the ‘intermediate’ market (shared equity/shared ownership/mutual housing) to construct a new lower rung on the housing ladder for those who cannot afford full ownership.
- New exemptions to the bedroom tax for anyone who has lived at an address for more than three years or who lives in a home with disabled adaptations
- A new Use Class for ‘non-permanent residential use’ to empower local planning authorities to control the number of second homes in their area.
- Enhanced powers of compulsory purchase for local authorities where developers land bank development sites or fail to use sites for which planning permission has been granted but development has not advanced or where need for affordable homes cannot be met on ‘exception’ sites through community land auctions/trusts.
-> Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
David Cameron and the £720,000 ‘affordable’ home
Posted: November 1, 2013 Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Planning, Shared ownership Leave a commentA comment on my blog a couple of weeks ago alerted me to a contradiction in terms: a £720,000 ‘affordable’ home.
The two-bedroom flat in Pear Tree Street, Islington appears on the Share to Buy website, the official home of the Mayor of London’s FirstSteps scheme that comes complete with the strapline ‘making housing affordable’. It’s available under a shared ownership, part-rent, part-buy scheme. As Tracy Dover commented: ‘I’d love to know who is eligible for shared ownership and can afford this!’
It can be yours for a £9,000 deposit plus monthly payments of £2,444 for rent, service charge and mortgage. By my calculations that represents around half the take-home pay of a household with the maximum eligible income of £80,000.
Shared vision
Posted: August 30, 2013 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing benefit, Legal, Shared ownership 2 CommentsShared ownership seems an obvious solution to the housing problems of people on low and middle incomes – so why does it remain on the margins?
A report out this week from Shelter looks at perceptions of and problems with the part rent-part buy tenure and ways that it could be reformed to take it into the mainstream.
In the process, it makes a pretty convincing case that the piecemeal, alphabet soup of government ownership schemes has done little to make housing more affordable for the squeezed middle and more to create confusion about the options available. In particular, it shows how shared ownership could make more homes in more places more affordable for more people than either version of Help to Buy. The report finds that almost eight out of 10 low to middle income families could not afford a family home with a 95 per cent Help to Buy mortgage.
Jules Birch 