Across the course of 12 blogs, I thought it would be useful to sum up some of the key housing policies which are being proposed, or being discussed as we speak. This is the fourth in the series.
The issue is that apart from the proposals to build more homes, many of the policies suggested or proposed just won’t work. The main reason being, without enough homes to house the nation at a price it can afford, whatever policies are introduced, they will just end up causing unintended consequences which could well make the situation worse.
What are the parties planning?
The three main parties definitely have building more homes on their agendas. Some are committing to targets, while others are concentrating on policies which aim to generate homes for different sections of society.
The Liberal Democrats are proposing to build more homes than other parties, 300,000 a year. Their plan is to do this through creating a Housing Investment Bank and building new, garden cities, towns and villages, not just on brownfield sites. Other ideas aim to bring back empty homes, although these kinds of policies have been proposed and tried for many years, but rarely been successful. Interestingly they are also looking at suspending the current ‘right to buy’ which has pretty much meant a loss of much needed social homes to the private sector, all sold at substantial discounts.
The Conservatives are going down the route of adopting different housing policies for specific target markets and are refusing as yet to commit to an overall target of the number of homes they will build. Their plans include the “Starter Homes initiative” which aims to create 100,000 discounted homes just for first-time buyers – as long as they are under the age of 40. In addition, they are considering rent to buy properties where people can rent a property for the long term at a discount and then buy the property, of which half will be one and two bed flats in London.
From Labour’s perspective, they are planning to build 200,000 a year but not until the end of the next term. Plans to deliver new builds include a ‘new homes corporations’ which would “work alongside housing associations and private sector organisations to increase the number of homes built in local areas”. The plan is to build more homes on mostly brownfield sites, but with some green development too.
The Greens have quite a strong policy for housing, saying they seek “a balanced mix of housing tenures, to meet the diverse needs of the community. These include individual and shared home ownership, leasehold, and others.” Although they don’t appear to have a number of homes they plan to build, they do seem much more aware than other parties of the need for affordable and social homes.
Unfortunately although many MPs are now on board with the real need for new homes, it looks like most are still ‘planning to fail’ to deliver enough homes to put roofs over people’s heads, much as they have for the last 30 years. This is especially true from an affordability and social home perspective. These are the properties that are desperately needed, but unfortunately few policies seem to address this issue, so the conclusion is, policies to build need to be much more ambitious!
