HOUSING
More homes, not just decent homes
He admitted that during his time as housing minister, Labour’s focus on dragging social housing up to a decent standard everywhere meant it did not put enough investment into new housing. He also said the party did not do enough to reform housing benefi t.
He said: “You can’t deal with the imbalance and problems of mismatch between demand and supply in housing unless you deal with housing benefi t: we didn’t do that in Government. We have two and a half years and really no excuse for not now trying to do it in opposition.”
Leslie Morphy, chief executive of Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people, said government policy meant we are now “creeping towards the end of social housing”, and that homelessness is on the
rise, especially in the capital, thanks to stagnant wages, unemployment, and high resnts.
She said far too much housing policy is based on “myth not reality”, noting that 93% of the increase in new housing benefi t claims come from households with at least one working adult.
After discussions about private sector landlords profi ting from over-generous housing benefi ts in some areas, and on the virtues of a return to rent
control, shadow communities secretary Hilary
Benn
(pictured left) joined the end of the debate after watching shadow chancellor Ed Balls’ speech, in which he suggested using the £3-4bn proceeds of
the 4G spectrum auction to fund 100,000 new homes.
Benn said: “This is a crisis that is very diffi cult for those experiencing it: but not yet fully understood by those who are well-housed and not entirely persuaded that we have a crisis that we need to address.”
Supply, supply, supply
Benn said the way to address all the problems at a stroke was increasing the supply of housing – but we haven’t been building enough homes for 30 or 40 years, he said, and doing so depends on three core factors: fi nance, land, and consent.
“At the moment we are seeing a catastrophic fall, in particular, in the supply of new affordable homes,” he said, adding that a combination of cuts to a variety of benefi ts meant many recipients would start prioritising food and heating over rent, meaning they will get into arrears and diffi culties.
The bedroom tax is a “particularly shameful policy”, he said. “For many people, this is their family home. This is where they raised a family.
The children may have left, but they come back to stay, the grandkids stop over at the weekend, perhaps it’s where a carer lives if they need support and a helping hand. That is what so- called ‘spare’ bedrooms are for.”
He said that when a think tank produced a report calling for owner-occupiers to downsize instead of ‘hoarding’ bedrooms, the then housing minister Grant Shapps attacked the report and accused it of bullying people out of their family homes. “But when it comes to the payment of housing benefi t, the Government’s policy is that you should be penalised fi nancially.”
He contrasted this approach to a policy in Labour-run Sandwell, where new two-bedroom bungalows were built to encourage older residents to move out of much bigger family homes – and which, “lo and behold”, worked. “As a result, two and three and four bedroom homes were freed up to let to people on the waiting list. That’s a different set of values and a different way of dealing with people.”
He said investing in new homes would not only help cut the housing benefi t bill by dealing with the supply and demand mismatch, but it would also create jobs in the depressed construction sector – turning more people into taxpayers instead of benefi ts claimants.
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public sector executive Sep/Oct 12 | 51
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