Home truths
Posted: October 22, 2012 Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Private renting Leave a comment‘We’re not in any way complacent,’ Mark Prisk told the Today programme this morning – having spent his interview being just that.
It’s the first time I’ve caught a media appearance by the successor to Grant Shapps, who was so ever-present in the radio and TV studios that he was dubbed the minister for Daybreak. Prisk is not on twitter either so other than a few brief interviews and a few blogs he is still a bit of a mystery to me.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Joining the dots on unemployment and welfare reform
Posted: October 21, 2012 Filed under: Labour market, Welfare reform | Tags: economy Leave a commentThere’s a contradiction lurking behind the good news about falling unemployment: we seem to be succeeding in getting people back into work who don’t want to be and failing with people who do.
The headline numbers in the labour market statistics are that unemployment fell by 50,000 in the three months to August to 2.5 million and the number of people in employment rose by 212,000 to 29.6 million. The latter figure is up by 462,000 since the 2010 election and is the highest total since records began in 1971.
Part of the reason why the number of people in work rose faster than unemployment fell is that the proportion of people between 16 and 64 defined as economically inactive is also falling. The total is down by 243,000 since the election to just over nine million and more than half of that fall (138,000) happened in the last three months.
Rent spiral
Posted: October 19, 2012 Filed under: Housing benefit, Private renting Leave a commentRemember when David Cameron claimed that housing benefit cuts were bringing down rent levels? I bet he doesn’t now either.
Cameron said at prime minister’s questions in January that: ‘What we have seen so far, as housing benefit has been reformed and reduced, is that rent levels have come down, so we have stopped ripping off the taxpayer.’
Read the rest of the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing.
Hidden costs
Posted: October 15, 2012 Filed under: Affordable housing Leave a commentBit by bit the facts about the affordable rent programme are leaking out but far too much remains hidden or unclear.
On Friday, in the typically under-stated style of all-party committees, MPs published their verdict so far. The public accounts committee concludes that ‘it is not yet clear whether the programme will deliver value for money in the long term’ and that ‘the department needs to do more work to understand the impact of the programme on tenants and its interaction with wider welfare reforms’.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Backyard blues
Posted: October 11, 2012 Filed under: Housebuilding, Planning Leave a commentIt’s great news that David Cameron used his conference speech to criticise nimbys and call for more homes but does he really get the problem?
In the week that has seen the launch of the pan-housing Homes for Britaincampaign it was significant that the prime minister went beyond the odd dutiful word in his leader’s speech at Birmingham. The bit that really struck me was this:
‘There are those who say “yes of course we need more housing”…but “no” to every development – and not in my backyard. Look – it’s OK for my generation. Many of us have got on the ladder. But you know the average age that someone buys their first home today, without any help for their parents? 33 years old. We are the party of home ownership – we cannot let this carry on. ’
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Sound of silence
Posted: October 9, 2012 Filed under: Housing benefit, Welfare reform | Tags: welfare cuts Leave a commentAmid all the rhetoric about those £10 billion cuts in welfare, what’s not being said could ultimately turn out to be more significant.
We’ve become so accustomed to welfare cuts that it’s easy to assume that another £10 billion is just more of the same. It isn’t and it is not at all clear where the savings will come from.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Strivers and scroungers
Posted: October 7, 2012 Filed under: Housing benefit 4 CommentsIn place of Labour’s ‘One Nation’, David Cameron today gave us two – with housing as the dividing line between them.
In an interview with Andrew Marr ahead of the opening of the Conservative conference he repeatedly pressed home the party’s appeal to ‘strivers’. ‘This week here in Birmingham you’re going to hear in huge detail how we get behind people who want to get on and want to make something of their lives,’ he said. ‘That’s what it’s about.’
He also signalled more cuts in welfare before the next election, despite ruling out the mansion tax that Nick Clegg has said will be the price of Lib Dem support for them. The most striking thing for me about the interview was the way that Cameron repeatedly used housing benefit as a proxy for the welfare system as a whole.
Popular posts Q3
Posted: October 5, 2012 Filed under: Blogging Leave a commentThese were the most viewed posts on my blog in the third quarter (July to Sept):
1) Victorian values – reflections on the legacy of Octavia Hill for housing, welfare and planning on the centenary of her death.
2) My criminal past – squatting, my own housing history and how what I did in London in the early 1980s would make me a criminal 30 years on.
3) More trouble with troubled families – a John Humphrys interview with Louise Casey got my goat but the problems with a programme based on unreliable and heroic assumptions had not gone away.
4) A lot of quid, not much quo – the continuing mystery of why the government has given housebuilders a multi-billion pound bail-out and asked so little in return.
5) Our dysfunctional housing market – or rather a non-market that is pricing out the young, undermining the welfare system and damaging the political system.
Interesting that the top three are the ones I enjoyed writing the most. Thanks very much for reading and also for commenting.
Rogue state
Posted: October 4, 2012 Filed under: Legal, Private renting Leave a commentThere is good news and bad news in a Shelter survey about rogue landlords out today but neither is quite what it appears at first glance.
The bad news is that complaints by tenants to their local authority about their private landlord are up 27 per cent in the last three years.
Worse, of 85,000 complaints in the last 12 months, 62 per cent related to category I and II hazards – things like dangerous electrics and damp that are serious or life-threatening, And there were 781 cases where health services had to get involved because of the behaviour or neglect of private landlords.
Read the rest of this post at Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 