Tuesday, August 31, 2021
More government failures on English housing crisis
Anybody looking to the UK Government to solve England's homelessness crisis may have to think again. According to the Independent, the bulk of the government's new £8.6bn “affordable homes programme” will be directed at helping homebuyers rather than renters.
The paper says that out of the 119,000 new homes being built, 57,000 will be for ownership, and just 29,600 will be for social rent. Meanwhile, 6,250 are set to be rural affordable homes, while in London, "affordable" shared ownership properties can be open to people earning as much as £90,000, while outside the capital they can be open to people on an £80,000 salary. Not that shared ownership is an affordable model anyway.
The government has pledged to build up to 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s but is set to miss this target by a decade. In 2019, UK housebuilding fell to its lowest quarterly rate for three years, and in 2020, housebuilding output dropped by a fifth.
Perhaps the reasoning behind this split lies in the fact that housing tenure is considered a large predictor of how a person votes, with renters typically supporting Labour and owners backing the Tories. However, the fact is that most of those in need of housing will not be able to afford to buy these homes, while the number for rent will continue to be totally inadequate.
The paper says that out of the 119,000 new homes being built, 57,000 will be for ownership, and just 29,600 will be for social rent. Meanwhile, 6,250 are set to be rural affordable homes, while in London, "affordable" shared ownership properties can be open to people earning as much as £90,000, while outside the capital they can be open to people on an £80,000 salary. Not that shared ownership is an affordable model anyway.
The government has pledged to build up to 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s but is set to miss this target by a decade. In 2019, UK housebuilding fell to its lowest quarterly rate for three years, and in 2020, housebuilding output dropped by a fifth.
Perhaps the reasoning behind this split lies in the fact that housing tenure is considered a large predictor of how a person votes, with renters typically supporting Labour and owners backing the Tories. However, the fact is that most of those in need of housing will not be able to afford to buy these homes, while the number for rent will continue to be totally inadequate.
