Posted in Housing

Putting people first : Venezuela builds 700,000 new homes

Venezuela new home in Great Housing MissionDespite facing many difficulties, Venezuela’s latest achievements in housing are a timely reminder of why our solidarity with Venezuela remains so important, writes Matt Willgress

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro recently inaugurated the 700,000th house built under a state-led initiative called the Great Housing Mission to provide housing to all Venezuelans, continuing the impressive results of a public housing program began in 2010 under late President Hugo Chavez, which has continued to deliver for Venezuelans despite the economic difficulties the country has faced in recent years. Continue reading →

Even the Tories’ naked bribery has now gone pear-shaped

Conference pear with Tory logoThere is a very noticeable difference between the way that the Tories and Labour have conducted this election.

The Tories have used the twin-prong approach: personal vilification which has proved counter-productive and now blatant giveaways (of other people’s money) to try to produce a false feel-good factor. However, no serious policy proposals for the country’s increasingly dire social and economic problems, especially the triple deficit problem of a budget deficit of nearly £100bn, a balance of payments deficit of over £100bn, and a productivity deficit that means living standards can’t rise. Continue reading →

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

Money-on-a-plateThe 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 because housing associations are independent charities so that their £65bn in borrowing is securely off the public accounts. But as Osborne must know only too well, compelling housing associations to sell to tenants using the same Right to Buy discounts enjoyed by Council tenants (up to £102,000 in London and £77,000 elsewhere) would cost serious amounts of taxpayer money and bankrupt some housing associations. This is yet another unfunded Tory commitment. Continue reading →

The case for fully devolving housing benefit to the Scottish government

house made of money – housing benefit

UNISON’s case for the full devolution of housing benefit has been supported by the respected think tank IPPR. Scotland needs all the policy levers to effectively address our housing crisis.

The command paper ‘Scotland in the United Kingdom: An enduring settlement‘, (love an optimistic title!) sets out the legislative provisions to enact the Smith Commission consensus for further devolution to Scotland. There has been some political froth over who holds power over those aspects of welfare that will be devolved. In fairness, consultation clauses are not unreasonable given the complexity of Universal Credit that will remain reserved to Westminster. Continue reading →

This government is more class-ridden than Thatcher’s

29804413_sYesterday’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 they desperately need.

Under Thatcher social renting declined by 990,000, under Major by 226,000, and under Blair by 726,000 (according to Savills Residential Property Research). It is now at the lowest level ever relative to demand since there are 1.4 million households on council waiting lists plus a further 80,000 homeless in temporary accommodation. Continue reading →