22 COMMENT
the extra money from Whitehall is wholly inadequate. Nearly two-thirds of councils have reported increases in the numbers of homeless people in temporary accommoda- tion since last April, with one third reporting “significant” increases. There are now over 80,000 homeless households in need of temporary accommodation and other forms of support from local authorities. This number includes over 123,000 children.
A recent survey by the New Local Government Network found that more than two-thirds of English councils believe they do not have sufficient funding to fulfil their legal duty to prevent homelessness – a figure that rises to 86 per cent in urban areas. Overall the LGA says that for the majority of councils, the act has not changed the underlying issues relating to housing.
In effect the state has replaced the bank of mum and dad.
Brought in to prop up the ailing housing market after the banking and financial crash of 2008/09 and to make house buying ‘more affordable,’ the Government expects the scheme to have supported the sale of up to 360,000 homes by 2021, at an outlay of around £22bn. This is an enormous level of subsidy from the taxpayer and many experts believe it has simply stoked demand and pushed house prices higher. The scheme’s existence has certainly coincided with bumper profits for the volume housebuilders, with firms like Persimmon doing particularly well. Their profits topped £1bn in 2018, assisted by it selling 7,970 homes through the Help To Buy scheme.
HOUSE BUILDING FAILS TO HIT THE HIGH NOTES Sadly the large-scale building of council housing is currently a thing of the past. While massive developments like Castle Vale are no longer seen as the solution due to their size and the concentration of challenges, they do allow for infrastructure and community facilities to be planned and delivered at scale.
English councils completed just 2,630 new homes in 2018, out of a total of 164,160 dwellings built across the whole country. This is less than half of the number of properties we achieved back in 1969. While housing associations weighed in with an additional 27,460 affordable homes, these figures are a drop in the ocean when
compared to the level of need. The lifting of the Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap was a welcome step, which councils had long called for. But the Government estimates this will only release funds for up to 10,000 new council homes a year. While this is a significant number, it is a relatively small contribution to the estimated 100,000 social homes a year which are needed.
In the meantime more dramatic actions are required to help bridge the gap between demand and supply. In the interim this could possibly come through the use of modern methods of construction, as well as buying properties on the open market, or converting unsold shared owner- ship properties into housing for rent.
HOMELESSNESS REMAINS A BLIGHT The charity Shelter launched a £1m campaign called ‘Face the Facts’ in 1969, aimed at getting the Government to change its definition of homelessness to include the hundreds of thousands of people living in appalling conditions.
The official figure for homelessness at the time stood at just 18,689, which was based on the numbers in temporary accom- modation. This vastly under-estimated the true scale of the problem.
This month we are marking the first anniversary of the Homelessness Reduction Act coming into force. Most councils are positive about the act in principle. But their prevention, support and re-housing services are being overwhelmed by the increasing levels of demand and
A MAJOR CONTRIBUTORY FACTOR Of course one thing that is very different from 50 years ago is that we did not have the Right to Buy to contend with. Introduced in 1980, this policy has overseen the wholesale sell-off of hundreds of thousands of council homes. There are two massive problems with the policy – councils were not given the means to replace the sold properties, so the stock of low rent homes inevitably declined, forcing many vulnerable families into the private rented sector with less security of tenure and paying higher rents for the privilege. Secondly many of these RTB properties
are now being let back to councils at extraordinarily high prices, and are being used to house families who would other- wise be homeless. This amounts to a huge waste of public resources as private landlords exploit the shortage of housing in many parts of the country. London councils in particular are being badly hit by this problem. It may seem hard for us to imagine a world when Brexit does not dominate everything else, but it will come soon and we need to be working on the housing solutions now. Transferring a large chunk of the Help To Buy billions of pounds over to council house building and providing the resources to tackle homelessness would be a good start. Let’s hope the Chancellor is listening to the lobbying from Shelter, the CIH and the LGA, or the next 50 years could see us grappling with exactly the same problems that we were, back in 1969.
OF COURSE, ONE THING THAT IS NOW VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE SCENE 50 YEARS AGO IS THAT WE DID NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO BUY TO CONTEND WITH
WWW.HBDONLINE.CO.UK
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68
