Recent Housing Articles

Five reasons why cutting housing support for young people is a bad move

contribution by Nicola Hughes

I watched David Cameron’s major speech on welfare reform yesterday. In case you missed it, he is proposing that housing benefit should no longer be available to under 25s.

It’s already kicked off a wealth of comment, with Conservative Home asking whether this a bold way to cut down a burgeoning benefits bill, or a political gamble that could ‘re-toxify’ the Conservative brand.

Here are five good reasons why cutting off this support could hold back young people who are trying hard to do the right thing:
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Sometimes you need to taste the sugar

contribution by Nathaniel Mathews

Paulie was born in Jamaica, but he has been living here since 1970. He came when he was a teenager to joing his parents, aunts and uncles, who had arrived in the UK in the early 50′s.

They were of the generation that came here on the good ship Windrush from the West Indies , to work as porters, clean toilets, do the work that we native born Britons did not wish to do.

Now he is in danger of losing his home.
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Housing for asylum seekers – a multi-million pound privatised nightmare

contribution by Lorna Gledhill

Last month, a young female asylum seeker and her twelve week old baby received an eviction letter demanding that they leave their current house in Bradford and relocate to Doncaster.

With barely a week’s notice, she was forcibly evicted and transported 40 miles to a tiny flat in the South Yorkshire town. Her new ‘home’ had no cooker, no table and chairs, and only a tiny sink to wash all kitchen equipment and clothes.

The UK Border Agency’s own standards clearly state ‘self-contained accommodation’ must include a cooker, a sufficient number of chairs for all tenants and acceptable laundry facilities.
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Will Baron Bassam do the right thing on squatting?

contribution by Jack Hewson

In 1975 Steve Bassam – now Baron Bassam – provided legal assistance for three of his fellow squatters in a Crown Court case following their eviction from a property in Brighton.

As his then friend Tony Greenstein recalls Bassam had “stood shoulder to shoulder” with him as “heavies” smashed their way in assisted by an Alsatian attack dog.

During their eviction one of the landlord’s men was injured as the occupiers defended themselves.
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How a Wealth Tax could work and get around problems

contribution by Geoff Hinkley

The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has been making a renewed push for his Mansion Tax and more generally to “shift from high marginal rates of tax on income… to taxation of wealth.” And now the Labour front bench has also come out in support of a Mansion Tax.

There is stiff opposition from the usual voices in the Conservative backbenches.

Much of it is nakedly political but there is a more practical objection too: you need to assess the value of the wealth being taxed.
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Ten myths about private rented housing

A quarter of Londoners live in private rented homes, but the Mayor doesn’t seem to spend a quarter of his housing efforts improving their lot.

I’m a lead member of the Assembly’s Planning & Housing Committee, and we recently conducted an investigation into poor housing conditions in the private rented sector, I was surprised at some of the arguments that were put forward against reforms.
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Social housing and the myth of ‘inherited’ tenancies

The past few months have seen an upsurge of interest in social housing- but for all the wrong reasons.

One example that has had the Tories and right-wing media frothing at the mouth is the need to get rid of ‘lifetime’ tenancies, so that Councils can re-allocate properties on a regular basis, moving on tenants who are ‘under-occupying’.
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Official figures show a rise in homelessness across England

The latest National Statistics on homelessness for England show that the number of homeless families and the number in temporary accommodation have started rising.

Though it is too early to say whether this is a trend, there was a 6% rise in the number of homeless households over the last year.

There was a large increase in the number of families in bed and breakfast accommodation – up from 2,660 to 3,370 compared to the same quarter last year.
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The local reality behind Cameron’s ‘dreams of home ownership’

contribution by Andy Slaughter MP

Yesterday, David Cameron stated that the “dream of home ownership” must be available to everybody, only a few days after one of Hammersmith and Fulham council’s properties featured on the BBC programme “Homes under the Hammer”.

The property was valued at £185,000 but sold for £221,000 at auction, which on the surface looks like a good deal.

However, far from making a council tenant a homeowner, the property was bought by someone who neither lived there, nor intended to.
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Why poverty is rising, and how this can be prevented

The shocking findings of IFS research about rising levels of poverty is a prediction about how things will get worse in the future. But it is not inevitable that poverty has to rise over the next decade.

The IFS found that rising poverty is a direct result of policy changes which are planned by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. There is an alternative, which is fully costed and which draws only on policies supported by these parties, which would mean that government policies do not lead to any rise in levels of poverty.

Here it is.
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