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Housing Market Broken, Ministers Say Ahead Of White Paper
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At last ! The Tories get the message.
We need more housing.... a case of the bleeding obvious if ever there I saw one.
At last ! The Tories get the message.
We need more housing.... a case of the bleeding obvious if ever there I saw one.
Answers
I realise some will not agree on this but much of the housing crisis today stems from Thatcher selling off council houses in the 1980's. An electoral bribe if I ever saw one. I appreciate that people want to own their own homes and that is a good thing - but these properties were often sold off at heavily discounted prices. Setting aside that point, it can perhaps...
08:33 Tue 07th Feb 2017
I have just heard Sajid Javid being interviewed by Humphrys.
It started off as a case of Mea Culpa, but soon degenerated into jabbering.
If this present Tory regime have finally accepted that the situation is so desperate that something needs to be done, then nobody will be better pleased than myself, but on the evidence of the bleating of Javid, I'm not holding my breath.
It started off as a case of Mea Culpa, but soon degenerated into jabbering.
If this present Tory regime have finally accepted that the situation is so desperate that something needs to be done, then nobody will be better pleased than myself, but on the evidence of the bleating of Javid, I'm not holding my breath.
I realise some will not agree on this but much of the housing crisis today stems from Thatcher selling off council houses in the 1980's. An electoral bribe if I ever saw one. I appreciate that people want to own their own homes and that is a good thing - but these properties were often sold off at heavily discounted prices. Setting aside that point, it can perhaps be justified if you build replacement social housing using the funds received, but as we all know this was never done because that was against the government's principles at the time. Now they have the audacity to blame the Labour party. We all know that large scale building of affordable homes to rent is never going to happen (unfortunately) - because the political will is just not there. Also it will lose the government votes because they would have to raise taxation to fund such a large scale project. Previously they have said the private sector will fund it - can't see how this will work, there's not enough profit in it. A bleak future I'm afraid for many of our young people who just want a decent affordable home. (Rant over !!)
This is taken from a BBC article
"The growth in asylum seekers and economic migrants, towards the end of Labour's time in power, added further to the pressure on the system.
Efforts to build more social housing in the dying days of Gordon Brown's premiership were, most observers agreed, too little and too late.
And the near collapse of the banking system ended the hopes of many on average incomes of ever owning their own homes.
With the amount demanded by banks as a mortgage deposit, a growing number of working people found themselves trapped in costly private rented accommodation until early middle age.
Since 2010, a decade-long decline in council house sales has been reversed thanks to the government's decision to increase the maximum discount available to tenants to £75,000 - £100,000 in London - and reduce the qualifying period to three years of residence in a property."
Take the last sentence. It wasn't always the Tories fault. I have always said that selling the Council houses which started by Margaret Thatcher was flawed in the fact that the money raised by the Councils was not used to buy more. Otherwise the system has allowed people to own their own houses that they would never have had before.
"The growth in asylum seekers and economic migrants, towards the end of Labour's time in power, added further to the pressure on the system.
Efforts to build more social housing in the dying days of Gordon Brown's premiership were, most observers agreed, too little and too late.
And the near collapse of the banking system ended the hopes of many on average incomes of ever owning their own homes.
With the amount demanded by banks as a mortgage deposit, a growing number of working people found themselves trapped in costly private rented accommodation until early middle age.
Since 2010, a decade-long decline in council house sales has been reversed thanks to the government's decision to increase the maximum discount available to tenants to £75,000 - £100,000 in London - and reduce the qualifying period to three years of residence in a property."
Take the last sentence. It wasn't always the Tories fault. I have always said that selling the Council houses which started by Margaret Thatcher was flawed in the fact that the money raised by the Councils was not used to buy more. Otherwise the system has allowed people to own their own houses that they would never have had before.
///The Labour Party initially proposed the idea of the right of tenants to own the house they live in, in its manifesto for the 1959 General Election///
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Without downplaying the plight of the homeless...I think there is another issue here which is that young people today have got different expectations. This isn’t going to turn into a “we lived in a shoebox and licked t’road clean for breakfast” diatribe but the fact is that the expectation when we bought our first house was that we would have nothing else for a while. No holidays, no nights at the pub, not much in the way of new clothes and so on. It was the way it was in the 70’s. I do think for some (not all) renting instead of buying is a lifestyle choice and, given that it is a lifestyle choice, its right that government should look at legislation to ensure that people can make that choice without being ripped off.
Linda....most people now admit, even dyed-in-the-wool Tories, that her policy of selling off Council Houses was fatally flawed. It was a patently obvious attempt at gerrymandering, and it worked !
But at last the Tories have admitted that there is a problem, which is a start I suppose. It was said on the radio this morning, that the average house prices in the South East was 8 times average earnings. This is just the problem that affordable rental housing is meant to address.
The private sector is far too greedy to take the place of affordable Council Housing, and what is needed is a massive new building project. It solved our housing problems after WW2 and it can do it again.
The rents needs to be governed and the homes themselves need to be ring-fenced, so that they can never be hived off in the future.
A new campaign of building Council Houses would also give the construction industry a much needed boost.
So ...a double whammy...new homes and new jobs...whats not to like ?
As I have already said this morning, now that the Tories have finally admitted that there is a problem, and appear, at least, to be thinking of actually doing something, nobody will be better pleased than myself if this ends up working.
But at last the Tories have admitted that there is a problem, which is a start I suppose. It was said on the radio this morning, that the average house prices in the South East was 8 times average earnings. This is just the problem that affordable rental housing is meant to address.
The private sector is far too greedy to take the place of affordable Council Housing, and what is needed is a massive new building project. It solved our housing problems after WW2 and it can do it again.
The rents needs to be governed and the homes themselves need to be ring-fenced, so that they can never be hived off in the future.
A new campaign of building Council Houses would also give the construction industry a much needed boost.
So ...a double whammy...new homes and new jobs...whats not to like ?
As I have already said this morning, now that the Tories have finally admitted that there is a problem, and appear, at least, to be thinking of actually doing something, nobody will be better pleased than myself if this ends up working.
Just one last point then I'll leave you all to it ! Others on here have said it was originally a Labour initiative to sell off council houses. That is true - but the vital difference between Labour governments and the Thatcher adminstration is that Labour would have replaced these homes, whereas the Tories didn't. This favoured the private rental market - the majority of these landlords / entrepreneurs being Tory voters who made a killing on the backs of people who could not afford to buy.This is because house prices had been artificially inflated due to the social housing stock being greatly reduced. So having given the working classes a reason to vote Tory, they then made sure their core support would remain and even increase with the opportunity to make even more money. The downside is that very little regard was given to those who suffered from these policies so I find the morality of this policy very questionable to say the least.
paddyk, //the vital difference between Labour governments and the Thatcher adminstration is that Labour would have replaced these homes, whereas the Tories didn't.//
But Labour, during their long years in government, didn't replace them either. They had every opportunity to do what you are saying they would do - and they didn't do it. They just carried on selling them.
But Labour, during their long years in government, didn't replace them either. They had every opportunity to do what you are saying they would do - and they didn't do it. They just carried on selling them.
paddyk
/// I realise some will not agree on this but much of the housing crisis today stems from Thatcher selling off council houses in the 1980's ///
/// but these properties were often sold off at heavily discounted prices. ///
*** Labour really pushed the boat out on public housing privatisation with ‘stock transfer’, a programme in which the sell off of councils’ property portfolios to housing associations. And all on the cheap: £4,200 per home on average. Three-quarters of all ‘transfers’ – almost 1 million property sales – were waved through by Blair and Brown in this fashion. Such homes are now lost to the public sector forever; their association owners under a limited obligation to help town halls whittle down their waiting lists. ***
*** One council housing crown does belong firmly in Labour’s territory, though not one its grassroots members ever wanted. As these charts show, council houses and flats passed into private ownership at a far greater rate in Brown and Blair’s 13 years than under two decades of Thatcher, Major and Cameron premierships. ***
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/// I realise some will not agree on this but much of the housing crisis today stems from Thatcher selling off council houses in the 1980's ///
/// but these properties were often sold off at heavily discounted prices. ///
*** Labour really pushed the boat out on public housing privatisation with ‘stock transfer’, a programme in which the sell off of councils’ property portfolios to housing associations. And all on the cheap: £4,200 per home on average. Three-quarters of all ‘transfers’ – almost 1 million property sales – were waved through by Blair and Brown in this fashion. Such homes are now lost to the public sector forever; their association owners under a limited obligation to help town halls whittle down their waiting lists. ***
*** One council housing crown does belong firmly in Labour’s territory, though not one its grassroots members ever wanted. As these charts show, council houses and flats passed into private ownership at a far greater rate in Brown and Blair’s 13 years than under two decades of Thatcher, Major and Cameron premierships. ***
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