Balancing act
Posted: October 17, 2013 Filed under: Private renting, Regulation Leave a commentGovernment action on private renting looked a distant prospect when it brusquely rejected plans for light-touch regulation as ‘red tape’ in 2010.
So today’s statement by Eric Pickles announcing a package of measures to give private tenants a better deal is evidence that even the Conservatives have woken up to the fact that they are a growing part of the electorate and testament to the efforts of campaigners over the last three and a half years.
Following up an announcement made – significantly – during the Conservative Party conference, the communities secretary says ‘we recognise there is more to do to support a vibrant private rented sector’.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Who buys it?
Posted: October 8, 2013 Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing market, Mortgages Leave a commentIt’s under attack from all sides but the strongest arguments for Help to Buy 2 are the ones that ministers cannot mention.
No matter how much David Cameron, George Osborne and the new junior housing minister go on about aspiration and opportunity, the critics refuse to go away. In just the latest example, the all-party Treasury select committeescorns government assurances to repeat its earlier warning that the controversial scheme will boost house prices and be politically impossible for future administrations to exit.
Here’s my analysis of the stated – and unstated – arguments made by ministers:
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
2020 vision
Posted: September 24, 2013 Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housebuilding, Local government, Planning Leave a commentEd Miliband’s conference speech was much vaguer about housing than the advance briefing but it still sounds like good news.
The Labour leader said that ‘we’ll have an aim that at the end of the parliament Britain will be building 200,000 homes a year, more than at any time in a generation’.
He said that in 2010 there were a million too few homes in Britain but that the shortfall would rise to two million – the equivalent of five cities the size of Birmingham – by 2020 if we carry on as we are.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Sanctions impact
Posted: September 23, 2013 Filed under: Homelessness, Labour market, Welfare reform Leave a commentAs everyone focuses on the bedroom tax, there is worrying evidence today of the impact of another part of the benefits system on vulnerable homeless people.
Tougher benefits sanctions were introduced in October 2012 for people on job seekers allowance (JSA). The period that benefit can be stopped increased from between one and 26 weeks to four weeks and three years. Changes for those on employment support allowance (ESA) followed in December 2012.
The changes are part of steadily escalating conditionality requirements, including the claimant commitment that will be introduced in 100 job centres a month from October as part of the government’s conviction that ‘looking for work should be a full time job’.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Export market
Posted: September 21, 2013 Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing market, Tax Leave a commentWhat price homes for Londoners when new developments are marketed first to overseas investors with a promise that there will be ‘no social housing’?
As The Standard reported yesterday, the ‘fully private’ flats at Capital Towers near the Olympic Park go on sale in Malaysia this weekend in what it dubs a ‘no riff raff row’.
That example comes from a report out today by Darren Johnson, a Green Party London Assembly member, who claims that a third of all buyers of new homes are from overseas and that two-thirds go to investors rather than occupiers.
He accuses mayor Boris Johnson of actively encouraging a process that leads to increasing concentration of housing wealth, a severe social housing shortage and the unnecessary demolition of existing stock and a lifetime of insecure renting for most Londoners.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Seeing the cracks
Posted: September 17, 2013 Filed under: Bedroom tax, Legal Leave a commentWhether it’s the UN, the Lib Dem conference or tribunals in Fife, the cracks in the bedroom ceiling are growing by the day.
As Pete Apps reports for Inside Housing, only two members of the junior coalition party voted against a grassroots motion at the conference in Glasgow yesterday calling for an immediate evaluation of the controversial policy.
The motion condemned the policy that Lib Dem MPs were instructed to call the ‘spare room subsidy’ for ‘discriminating against the most vulnerable in society’. Richard Kemp, former leader of Liverpool Council, called it ‘reprehensible and evil’ and Baroness Shirley Williams, probably the party’s senior figure, called it a ‘big mistake’.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Silly season
Posted: September 13, 2013 Filed under: Economics, Housing market, Mortgages Leave a commentSilly? Naïve? Bonkers? Proposals by the RICS for managing house price inflation are getting about as warm a welcome in the property industry as the UN got at Conservative HQ.
Some of the reactions are just as self-interested too since an end to house price volatility would be good news for people who want to buy but very bad news for some of those queuing up to say the whole idea is crazy. While some critics point with good reason to the practical difficulties of implementing the idea, others seem personally offended by the very idea of putting a stop to the house price gravy train.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
