Labour’s plan to build lots more housing, especially social housing, set out in detail here. Pennycook also did a thread on BlueSky which provides a handy summary.
So, in summary (with links to relevant bits of the thread): £39bn for a 10-year plan, aiming for 300,000 homes of which 180,000 will be social housing. The £39bn includes skills training and low-interest loans for social housing providers.
They’re going to reform (not abolish, unfortunately) Right to Buy, so that homes are less discounted, tenants will have to wait longer before they can buy the homes, and those in new homes will have an even longer wait - 35 years before any of those 180,000 projected new homes can be bought under right to buy.
Doesn’t go as far forward as I’d like, but I don’t see a backward step here. More homes is good, more money for more homes is good, social housing is the best kind of housing, and mitigating the worst of right to buy is still a forward move, even if it’s not a whole step forward. So I make that 3.5 steps forward, 0 steps back!
There are ~600,000 unoccupied homes in UK, of which over 248,000 are long-term vacant, meaning empty for 6+ months. Why the ruling class wants more? Are we so delusional to believe that they want to bring down house prices? I think the “professional landlords” and real estate corporations just want more assets, and they will outbid who wants a home to live in and will raise the prices even further.
The population wants and needs more housing, that’s been a fact for quite some time now. Adding way more supply to the market should help house prices, albeit a small amount. We’re already seeing the average price start to drop in real terms.
I’d be interested to see where those 600,000 houses are and what condition they’re in and if they’re suitable for modern families.
the downside I see is that after 35 years, the value of the area will go up incredibly (building stable communities has the tendency of raising property prices), and the actual tenants who want to buy the homes they’ve raised kids in will simply not be able to afford the homes. If the wait was maybe 15 years, then they might have a chance.
At the same time I can understand that making the waiting time period short could be potentially gamed
But only they will be eligible to buy them. So, either they get to buy them or they just get to stay. Win-win?
I genuinely hope that’s the case. I have some misgivings about another government coming in and stating otherwise, whilst giving some token concessions to the tenants who currently live there to clear out.
I don’t think R2B’s ever worked that way, it’s always been tenants only!
that’s reassuring, and I guess is more a reflection of my own lack of faith in current governments worldwide in general
Yes, it’s fair - and indeed, good and right - to be sceptical. But we have to temper the scepticism with realism, which is the tricky bit!