The bedroom tax and the housing benefit cap which will hit tenants next April are now being joined by another, more insidious destroyer of housing security. The social housing sector, which originally was intended as an alternative supplier of affordable housing in place of local authorities, has now been turned into a pure market operator [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Social housing’
Tory housing policy, like the economy, hits the buffers
Aug 24th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Housing is the biggest social disaster area in Britain today, and the report published today of Sir Adrian Montague, chair of 3i investment group and big donor to the Tories, reveals all too clearly why Tory housing policy is stuck in an impasse from which it cannot escape. Even he admits that housing demand has [...]
Cut through the spin and Government is presiding over the death of social housing
Jun 14th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.In November last year Cameron, unveiling his master plan to get everyone a mortgage and boost the housing market, proclaimed with gusto: “You always remember the moment, if you’ve done it, when you get the key to your first flat. It’s a magic moment. It’s a moment I want everyone in this country to have, [...]
Eviction is the weapon of choice against the poor
Aug 30th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.We have now come full circle on housing. After the Second World War a massive building programme for social housing was launched by the Attlee Government and continued by Macmillan through the 1950s. Thatcher began to unwind this process in the 1980s by drastically reducing local authority house-building from 200,000 a year to just 30,000 [...]
Lying about homelessness isn’t the main scandal
Jul 5th, 2011 by Michael Meacher.It’s bad enough that Ministers repeatedly lied in concealing their predictions about the growth of homelessness due to their own measures. But what matters a lot more is what’s going to be done to avert potentially the worst social crisis in Britain for decades. Having to subsist on poverty rations is dreadful, but not having [...]
