How new rent controls could work
The biggest talking point of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to Labour Party conference this week was rent controls. Since 2014 Labour has been proposing to limit rises in rents during tenancies, but there was something different this time around.
This is what the Labour leader said on Wednesday:
We will control rents – when the younger generation’s housing costs are three times more than those of their grandparents, that is not sustainable. Rent controls exist in many cities across the world and I want our cities to have those powers too and tenants to have those protections.
The lexical challenge of building more affordable homes
At the launch of the Affordable Housing Commission in October, the chair, Lord Best, a veteran of august commissions spanning the past 30 years, related an experience he’d had with one that was looking at The Future of the Family.
More than halfway into the process, its chair came to meet its sponsor (then plain old Richard Best) and admitted that they were a little behind schedule. They hadn’t managed to agree on a definition of “family”.
From the off, members of the commission – of which I am honoured to be one – are therefore highly conscious of the need to get the basics right. But not only do we need to know what “affordable” means (already the subject of much controversy in the housing world), but I think we also need to define “home”.
Housing White Paper: could Starter Homes be genuinely affordable?
As the publication date for the government’s Housing White Paper approaches, we and groups across the the housing world are hoping for an announcement that will signal a ‘whole new mindset’, as the Secretary of State has promised.
One item that will be included is confirmation of how the government’s long-running Starter Homes policy will work – and the detail will tell us how far it will go towards slowing the affordability crisis for first-time buyers. This is the government’s flagship policy that was pitched as “turning Generation Rent into Generation Buy”.
Buying out of the bubble
This week we published our renters’ manifesto, a portfolio of reforms that will end the exploitation of tenants while ensuring a fair and sustainable market for landlords.
But the cause of the problems in the private rented sector often track back to the limited supply compared to the demand for homes and the effect this has on rental prices.
What to do about letting agents…
Yesterday I was asked a surprisingly difficult question. I was asked what I thought of charities and local authorities setting up “ethical” letting agencies. The fact is I haven’t given huge amounts of thought to it – though our office is maintaining a watching brief on their activities and seeing what can be learnt.
So I had to retreat to an instinctive (and unpopular) no. It seems inconceivably that the state or non-profit sector could or should compete in this space cost effectively. We’re glad they do so as they are a rare respite for people who are routinely exploited, but on being scrutinised on the issue, I just couldn’t see how they could be scaled to have a beneficial impact for millions of people.
I have had a think now, and while I did so fully prepared to explain why I had been wrong and have changed my mind, I haven’t. I really don’t think such projects are a solution to the letting agency problem. But as a representative of a tenant advocacy group, this does bear some explaining.
A response to Labour’s Lyons report on housing
For almost a year Labour has been touting its Lyons Housing Review as the central plank of its offer for the 2015 manifesto. But its publication today, after so much foreplay, has left me disappointingly unsatisfied.
Win £10k to set up a Community Land Trust
Would you like to take control of your area and create permanently affordable homes?
The Community Land Trust Network, supported by the Oak Foundation, is offering 20 grants of up to £10,000 each to support the set up or development of new CLTs in urban areas. CLTs are volunteer-led, community-run non-profit organisations that develop permanently affordable homes, workspaces or other land-based assets in their area. In addition to the cash grant, the CLT Network is also offering a package of training, advice and other support to the 20 winners.
The deadline for entering the competition is 7th September. Check out the Urban CLT project webpage for more information. And if you’re on twitter, why not follow @community_land too 🙂
Alex
How to build loads of truly and permanently affordable homes, without spending any money
At Generation Rent, we’ve listened to lots of experts who have analysed the housing crisis and have come to a conclusion. The principle problem is that you can’t just buy or rent a home, you have to pay for an investment too. Some people say the problem is supply – and that’s true – but the supply problem exists because of the inability to supply homes that people need without charging them a high price because of a potential future investment return.
And so we’ve been looking at how you can decouple the investment value of a home for an investor from its utility value to the person living there. And we came up with this. Britain needs a second housing market. A bubble-free housing market for people who only want a home, sitting neatly alongside a free market for those people who want an investment.
And it turns out this could be implemented cheaply and easily and that it will save taxpayers money. We’ve made a short presentation here and written a paper, Buying out of the bubble.
So we’re calling for a secondary, bubble-free housing market – and we need your support to get politicians to adopt it and implement it. Join Generation Rent today (it’s free) and help us campaign for real, effective solutions to the housing crisis.
Cheers,
Alex
The housing crisis is splitting the country in two
The number of houses being left empty has increased by 25% in the past decade – and so has the number of households with 6 or more people. That’s according to the Office for National Statistics, which has published analysis of household composition data from the 2011 census.
It’s already well-documented that private renting has risen as fewer people are able to afford to buy a house, but these two statistics are a stark illustration of the growing inequality in British society as a result of the broken housing market. The 3 million-plus people crammed into the 543,000 households of 6 or more would be a bit annoyed to know that there are over 1 million homes around the country that are going spare.
Are garden cities the answer to the housing crisis?
Next year’s General Election will be decided by generation rent. There are 86 seats with enough private renters without party allegiance to overturn the incumbent MP’s majority, so every party should be courting their vote. After Labour’s pitch on rent reforms, the Coalition parties have used the Queen’s Speech to respond with their own grand plan: garden cities, and legislation to reform planning laws to bring them about.