Posts Tagged ‘Social housing’

Housing is now financialised, like the rest of market capitalism

by Michael Meacher.

The enforced sell-off of housing association homes, at the same enormous discounts as under Right to Buy (£70,000+ for a flat and up to £102,000 for a house) is driven by the two Tory goals, not only to act as bribes for voters at election time, but also to bring homes as an asset into […]

Tories make tenants and homeless pay for social housing give away as election bribe

by Michael Meacher.

The desperate search for shrinking votes has pushed Iain Duncan Smith into yet another spectacular own goal. His latest pet idea is to extend the Right to Buy to Britain’s 2.5m housing association tenants. However, whilst social homes are owned by Councils, this latest Tory brainwave means selling off housing association assets which are private property […]

This government is more class-ridden than Thatcher’s

by Michael Meacher.

Yesterday’s report that the government has exempted developers who turn an empty building into private housing from having to build further affordable housing not only gives super-rich investors like the Abu Dhabi investment fund a free windfall of hundreds of millions of pounds, it also deprives some of the poorest families of the affordable housing […]

35,000 low-cost homes lost last year by government’s open market policies

by Michael Meacher.

The government’s latest housing policy is to force social landlords who receive government funding to build new homes to convert a proportion of their existing social rented homes into the Tories’ new ‘affordable rent’ tenure. ‘Affordable rent’ in government-speak actually means the opposite. It means pricing rents at up to 80% of local average open […]

Is the home ownership model outdated, and ready for the dustbin of history?

by Thomas Butler.

Let us set the scene. You’re a Labour government, it’s 2015, and you’re tasked with tackling economic instability, and health and social problems on a scale not seen in living memory. You need a grand idea, a pillar of policy that states your long term vision, that gives everything you do afterwards solid foundation, and […]

When social housing turned into a money spinner

by Michael Meacher.

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 […]

Tory housing policy, like the economy, hits the buffers

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

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

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

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 […]

© 2024 Left Futures | Powered by WordPress | theme originated from PrimePress by Ravi Varma