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HOUSING CRISIS

A Quick Rundown of the Government's Latest Attempt to Solve the Housing Crisis

Spoiler: it won't work.
MW
London, GB

(Photo by Chris Bethell)

Politicians are frequently accused of being out of touch. But not communities secretary Sajid Javid. Launching the government's new housing white paper, Javid gave this frank assessment: "The housing market in this country is broken, and the cause is very simple: for too long we haven't built enough homes." Spot on. Unfortunately, there is very little in the paper to suggest we'll be building any more in the near future.

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That's not to say it isn't full of ideas. As housing minister Gavin Barwell tweeted earlier this week: "Spoiler alert: there's no silver bullet." This is what's known as the "throw enough shit at a wall" approach to policymaking. Of course, coming up with hundreds of proposals inevitably involves rehashing loads of ideas you've had before. Or attempting to fix things you were responsible for fucking up in the first place.

Take this example: councils will be asked to come up with ambitious housing targets. The government will be checking their figures are realistic, and has said councils will have to work with each other "so that difficult decisions are not ducked". In other words, it's bringing back regional housing targets. No mention of the fact that these were scrapped by the Tories seven years ago/), weeks after they came into power, in favour of letting councils get on with things themselves.

Still, this is one of a few coherent and decent ideas in a paper otherwise littered with buzzwords. There are proposals for "simplifying plan-making and making it more transparent". Who doesn't like things simple and, er, transparent? Will it actually mean any more homes? Nobody knows.

We're told there will be measures to support small builders. That the government will help people build their own homes. Really? That's your solution? We build our own houses?

Apparently we'll find innovative and exciting new construction methods to build houses. Councils will make public land available for development. These are evergreen housing policies. They're rolled out every few months to maintain the illusion that civil servants didn't just give up on housing and fuck off to Wetherspoons several years ago.

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Here's a policy that might actually have made a difference: building on the Green Belt. Unfortunately, one of the very clear messages in the paper was that the government will most definitely not be building on the Green Belt. Great. So that's cleared up then.

"The UK needs to build 275,000 homes a year. We're currently building just over half that figure."

If you really want to find some good news in all this, the government has finally acknowledged that the dream of homeownership has died for an entire generation. Launching the paper, Javid said: "Walk down your local high street today and there's one sight you're almost certain to see. Young people, faces pressed against the estate agent's window, trying and failing to find a home they can afford. With prices continuing to sky rocket, if we don't act now, a whole generation could be left behind."

Admittedly, on the face of it, that doesn't sound great. But it does mean that something might actually be done to stop renters being shafted, given that pretty soon we're going to be in the majority.

There are proposals to help renters – with a commitment to bring in a ban on letting fees and proposals for longer-term tenancies. This is obviously good. But isn't a ban on fees, which should always have been illegal, the least we could hope for? And longer tenancies will only be offered on new build properties owned by banks and pension funds. What about the millions of people already trapped in buy-to-let homes on insecure tenancies as rents continue to spiral?

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Launching the white paper, Javid described the housing crisis as "one of the biggest barriers to social progress in this country". The UK needs to build 275,000 homes a year. We're currently building just over half that figure. So where are the radical solutions? How is the rate of house building going to be doubled if all the government can come up with is a load of old ideas?

Javid admitted we haven't built enough homes, but he didn't reveal any plans to build more. Here was an opportunity to bring in new powers and funding for councils and housing associations to build more houses. But the government still believes the private sector can fix the crisis. The truth is, private sector house builders have never built enough homes to meet demand. They never will, and this problem isn't going away.

Still, at least we won't being shafted with letting fees.

@mark_wilding

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