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 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
Tagged with Homelessness
It is immoral to stop squatting unless alternative housing is available
Tomorrow clause 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act kicks in, which will make squatting in residential buildings punishable by up to 6 months’ jail and/or fines of up to £5,000.
Given that there are now nearly 5 million households on Council (including ALMO) and Housing Association waiting lists, together with 80,000 families officially classified as homeless, and given that fewer houses are being built this year than in any year since 1923, the expulsion of squatters under the Tories’ new law can only result in a big increase in homelessness. Continue reading
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Kid gloves for the Banks and throw the poor on the street?
Businesses need funding fast, so why doesn’t Osborne just order RBS and Lloyds to ratchet up the lending? After all, he controls 80% of the former and 40% of the latter, more than those who talked about seizing the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy ever dreamed of.
Why instead does he go cap in hand to the Bank of England begging it to overseee the pumping of loans to small firms through a process known as ‘credit easing’, thus bypassing the banks even though he owns two of the largest? And why does Cameron refuse to stop the obnoxious payment of gigantic bonuses in the City piggery on the pretence that he can’t micro-manage the banking system? Continue reading
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Labour’s shame on empty homes
Late on Tuesday night, the government rushed through the criminalisation of homeless people squatting in residential buildings with fines of up to £5,000 and a year in jail. To his credit, Labour MP John McDonnell tabled several amendments, including one that would have exempted squatters in buildings which had been empty for six months or more without refurbishment, lease or sale. To its shame, Labour asked its MPs to abstain on that clause. As usual, most Labour MPs simply followed the whips instructions without even being aware what they were voting about. Continue reading
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How Grant Shapps is ‘tackling homelessness’
‘Tackling homelessness and rough sleeping is what first got me into politics,’ Conservative housing minister Grant Shapps emphasised in a Department of Communities and Local Government press release just over a week ago.
I’m glad to hear it, and it is obviously not for me to doubt the sincerity of a man who famously once spent Christmas Eve in a sleeping bag on the streets outside Victoria station in order to highlight the plight of homeless children.
Shapps’ attitude marks a refreshing change from that evinced by his Old Etonian predecessor Sir George Samuel Knatchbull Young, 6th Baronet, who contemptuously remarked in 1991 that one couldn’t even leave the opera without stepping over a rough sleeper. When housing ministers say things like that, you know your housing policy is deeply mired in something undesirable. Continue reading
