Bald truths
Posted: January 9, 2014 Filed under: Housebuilding Leave a commentLike bald men with a comb, the politicians squabbled yesterday over who has the worst record on housebuilding.
The ghost of Stanley Baldwin occupied the green benches once again as Hilary Benn and Eric Pickles traded stats to show that each other’s governments had built the fewest new homes (in England) since the 1920s.
So where Benn opened the opposition debate with the accusation that ‘in the three years for which he has been in charge, the number of homes completed in England has fallen to its lowest level since Stanley Baldwin was first prime minister’, Pickles countered with ‘when I walked through the door of Eland House the spirit of Stanley Baldwin and those figures met me. That was our baseline—that is what we actually started from.’
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Benefit baseline
Posted: January 7, 2014 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Welfare state | Tags: Council housing, George Osborne, housing benefit, welfare Leave a commentThe ‘hard truths’ about welfare outlined by George Osborne beg far more questions than answers when it comes to housing.
In a speech yesterday the chancellor set out plans for £12 billion worth of cuts in welfare and £13 billion cuts in departmental budgets in 2016/17 and 2017/18 if the Conservatives win the next election.
And he singled out housing as the target of two specific cuts: housing benefit for the under-25s; and council housing for people earning more than £60,000 a year.
However, a quick look at the detail of those proposals raises real doubt about how much they would really save and what else might be on the Tory agenda.
Appearance and reality in the 2014 housing market
Posted: January 5, 2014 Filed under: Buy to let, Help to Buy, Housing benefit, Housing market, Labour market, Private renting | Tags: David Cameron, Fergus Wilson, housing benefit, Sharon Ray 3 CommentsCombine one ex-PR man prime minister with one lucky homebuyer who’s also an estate agent, then add one ex-teacher turned buy-to-let mogul. Welcome to the New Year recipe for housing, where perceptions are everything.
David Cameron used Help to Buy as a metaphor for the Conservative message about economic recovery and opportunity for all when he took part in a photo op in Southampton with a young mum and her toddler and had tea in the new home she’s just bought through a government scheme.
It seemed standard, if rather awkward-looking fare, until this post appeared on the internet claiming that the young mum, Sharon Ray, was actually Sharon O’Donnell, a sales director with the estate agent that allegedly sold the home. That was followed by a typically sexist story about the ‘attractive blonde’ in the Mail and this corrective about some exaggerations and errors in the original post. Cue a Twitterstorm and debate between those seeing the whole thing as an example of Tory fakery and those outraged by the hounding of a young woman who’d done nothing wrong.
10 things about 2013: part 2
Posted: December 30, 2013 Filed under: Buy to let, Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Housing market, Labour market, Planning, Private renting, Wales | Tags: Budget George Osborne, David Cameron Leave a commentHere’s the second part of my look back at the key themes I’ve been blogging about this year.
6) Help to Buy
If the bedroom tax was the subject I blogged about most in 2013 (see Part 1 of this blog), Help to Buy was certainly the best (or worst) of the rest.
The first hints of the scheme came in January as the coalition published its Mid-Term Review. Perhaps conscious of the gap between rhetoric and reality when it came to the government’s record on housing, David Cameron promised more help for people who cannot raise a deposit for a mortgage, with details to come in the Budget. By March Cameron and Clegg were promising what sounded to me like the coalition’s fourth housing strategy in three years. And in the Budget George Osborne duly announced what I called a huge gamble, loosening the targeting of previous schemes at first-time buyers and new homes and extending the help available much further up the income scale.
Taking the pledge
Posted: December 17, 2013 Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning | Tags: Conservative Party, Ed Miliband Leave a commentThe optimist in me hopes that Ed Miliband’s launch of Labour’s independent housing commission marks the start of a political arms race on housing ahead of the next election.
In this scenario, his target of 200,000 homes a year by 2020 and eye-catching policies to achieve it will strengthen the hand of the pro-development wing of the Conservative Party and mean that whoever wins the next election will have a serious crack at tackling the supply crisis.
The pessimist in me worries that I’ve seen little so far that suggests the target is achievable (see Colin Wiles on this last week) and that the two policies that have made the headlines won’t work except in the sense of strengthening the hand of the Tory nimbys.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Inside the pressure cooker
Posted: December 16, 2013 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting, Welfare reform | Tags: DCLG, DWP, housing shortage, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Leave a commentSo what is really happening to homelessness in the wake of the financial crisis, housing shortage and cuts in benefits?
Where the Homelessness Monitor 2013, published on Friday by Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, paints a picture of a grim situation that is bad and getting worse, the DWP and DCLG seem to see only sunshine and happy smiling faces.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 