Author: Steve Hilditch

In a splendid journalistic error*, the Times reported that Sir Eric Pickles is expected to be given a seat in the House of Lords ‘as part of Mrs May’s disillusion honours list’. It may of course have been a deliberate choice of words, as Eric contributed quite a lot to the failure of housing policy during his years in charge.
In and around his former housing brief, the dissolution of Parliament meant a deluge of last minute actions. Most important, the Homelessness Reduction Bill became an Act just in time. Red Brick’s line has been that the Act is very worthwhile but underfunded and has virtually no chance of succeeding in its basic aims in the high-pressure areas of the country, and especially in London. This is because every other aspect of Government policy, from the lack of supply of social housing to the dreadfully punitive changes in benefits, will lead inexorably to an increase in homelessness at the same time as local authorities’ ability to respond is reducing fast. The Act will need a lot of scrutiny as it is implemented, but for those who have the energy to read the whole thing, it can be found here.
The Communities and Local Government and Work and Pensions Select Committees managed to publish their joint inquiry report on The  Future of Supported Housing. They conclude that the Government’s proposed funding model for supported housing is unlikely to achieve the objective of establishing long-term and sustainable funding, echoing the unanimous view of the sector itself. Rather than relying on housing benefit or universal credit up to the local housing allowance level, with a top-up fund available for disbursement to councils, the Committees support the introduction of a Supported Housing Allowance which would reflect the diversity of the sector, with separate funding mechanisms for emergency accommodation and refuges.
The CLG Committee also published its report on Capacity in the Homebuilding Industry. Starting with the now unanimous view that ‘the housing market is broken’ the Committee sought to find out whether the homebuilding industry was capable of boosting housebuilding output to the levels required. Their conclusions suggest that it is not! They found the industry dominated by a small number of volume housebuilders, and that their commercial self-interest means they have ‘little incentive to build any quicker’. A far greater mix of builders and more competition is needed. They identify the speculative land market as a particular problem, with high prices leading to increased densities and less affordable housing, and recommend that their successors return to this issue. They want to increase the role of local councils and call for changes to the limitations on councils’ ability to borrow to build. Local authorities, they conclude, do not have the tools they need to make an effective contribution to solving our housing crisis. They support growth in housing association activity, but note that they ‘require greater certainty over their income from social rent’ and that ‘they must remain conscious of their charitable objectives’. They also caution about the growing skills crisis facing the industry and the dangers posed by the process of leaving the European Union.
And finally in this little round-up, the Public Accounts Committee published its report entitled Housing: The State of the Nation. Despite the slightly grand title, the report looks at two main issues – the ‘housing gap’ (England) and ‘getting more out of housing benefit’. The housing gap section has a familiar analysis of the huge failure in housebuilding compared to need, and its effects. Even if the Government meets its objective of 1 million homes over five years, it will not come close to meeting the actual level of need. The Committee criticises ‘The Department’s lack of ambition on such a fundamental issue’. The section on housing benefit complains specifically about the lack of information available ‘on the impacts and value for money of the roughly £21 billion that the Government spends each year on housing benefit’, and highlights in particular ‘the poor value for money obtained from the £8 billion or so of housing benefit with which it annually subsidises private landlords’.
With the Election underway, Labour has already made a number of announcements about its housing policies, including a commitment to providing 500k genuinely affordable homes during a Parliament and a raft of policies to improve standards in the private rented sector. It’s a good start, and we will try to look at all of the main Manifestoes as they are published.
 
*spotted by Private Eye

While Boris Johnson mutters inanely about mugwumps, Jeremy Corbyn has tried hard to raise the housing issue in the election over the last couple of days and has started to trail Labour’s manifesto commitment to build a million homes.
Despite the media fascination with Johnson’s clowning, I think Jeremy’s core point – Labour will build more homes and more social rented homes – has come across well.  It was good to see his real passion for the subject during his visit to Harlow today.
It seems any debate about housing during elections – the same happened in 2010 and 2015 – is dogged by deliberate obfuscation about what is being discussed. At PMQs on Wednesday, Corbyn’s question to Theresa May was met by the well-rehearsed stock answer that Cameron delivered so many times before – the Tories have built more council houses than Labour did when it was in office.
It happens to be true, but what does it tell us? It tells us that the Labour Government didn’t want councils to be major builders – it’s one of my main beefs with Labour during the Government years. Instead, the money was put into housing associations to provide social rented housing and shared ownership. Mrs May never addresses that. The only comparison that matters between the two governments is how many homes for social rent were provided by councils AND housing associations together. Here the Labour Government wins hands down and many times over.
Sadly, the same confusion dogged the interview at lunchtime between Andrew Neil and Jack Dromey on the Daily Politics. Neil is just about the only interviewer who asks intelligent questions about housing because he has bothered to look up the figures and learn the difference between starts and completions. But even Neil compared apples and bananas in his questions. Mr Corbyn, he said, has committed to 500,000 new council and housing association homes over a Parliament but the only evidence we have to go on is Labour’s record in office. And then, the switch – he quoted the figures for council homes only. And he repeated the point a few times – the Tories build more council houses than Labour, so why should we believe Corbyn’s commitment?  And that was followed by another confusion, as Sayeeda Warsi started quoting housebuilding figures for the UK while Neil was talking England (or was it England and Wales?).
The viewer sadly must be left completely bewildered, and I hope Andrew Neil will return to the issue again.
Fortunately, Jeremy Corbyn managed to be very clear in his speech in Harlow that the commitment is to build 500,000 new council and housing association homes over the next Parliament. I know it’s a mouthful, but truncating the commitment to ‘council houses’ removes the meaning. Most people involved with housebuilding know that it would be virtually impossible to reach a target of completing 100,000 council homes a year even by the end of the Parliament, and certainly impossible to do it each year starting this year. Even if the resources and borrowing powers were available, it would take several years to gear up, to assemble the land, design the schemes, procure the building contracts, and get started on site. It would be a very good thing to do, but it would not produce the homes fast enough.
So, meeting Labour’s target will be dependent on getting housing associations to provide the homes. They are in a much stronger position than councils to accelerate housebuilding and have a track record of being able to produce homes for social rent and for shared ownership. To meet the target, councils will need to be the planners and the strategists and housing associations will need to be the primary deliverers.
As readers will be aware, I have my criticisms of housing associations. But if a new Labour Government had a clear direction and policy, and made the resources and powers available, I believe housing associations would respond. Most will do so with great enthusiasm, but even those associations who (shall we say) aren’t keen ‘to do social rent’ anymore would follow the money.
John Healey has also been all across the media promoting Labour’s message and has published his new report on Housing Innovations being undertaken by Labour Councils. It’s a recommended read.

Below is my contribution to the Spring Edition of Fabian Review, Ambition to Build. Labour has a strong set of policies which command a lot of support across the Party, but we need to do more to ensure that our strategy will meet the scale of our housing crisis.
 
To mark the recent 40^th anniversary of the death of Anthony Crosland, I re-read his influential 1971 Fabian Pamphlet  ‘Towards a Labour Housing Policy.’, which led to a serious re-think within the Labour Party.
It made me conclude that, although Labour has developed a substantial set of housing policies which attract wide support, skilfully marshalled by shadow Secretary of State John Healey MP, I have growing doubts that they will meet the scale of the task, which is so much bigger than any of us could have imagined possible a decade ago. To meet the challenge, we must find more ambitious, radical and transformative solutions. Of the many areas to explore, there are five I would like to highlight here.
First – where will the money for investment come from? After 2010 the Coalition massively cut traditional housing investment – 60% in the 2010 budget alone. We are now building virtually no new social rented homes. Despite austerity, the Tories have propped up the failing housing market, throwing money at it in the form of subsidies, loans and guarantees. Yet most economists agree that their action on the demand side will increase prices in the longer term, intensifying unaffordability with little impact on supply. The main rented programme – so-called ‘affordable rent’ – was an abuse of language with very high rents.
Based on Treasury figures, a new Government reverting to Labour’s balanced 2010 priorities would have a bonanza of £32 billion available as subsidy for genuinely affordable housing including a major new programme of social rent. That is a transformative amount.
Secondly, and linked, we must finally end the Treasury conventions that discriminate against public investment. It’s an old story, but a good one. No other country in Europe accounts for public investment as we do. That’s why foreign state-owned companies can invest in our utilities when we can’t. Council borrowing for housing, which pays for itself by generating an income stream (rents), should be taken out of the main measure of public borrowing – as happens across Europe. Councils, controlled by effective prudential rules, could become major contributors to housing supply once more.
Thirdly, a century ago Winston Churchill called land ownership ‘the mother of all monopolies’, describing owners as benefitting from ‘enrichment without service’. Land values are not created by owners but by all of us. The public should share in land value appreciation, especially when planning permission – the process by which the community takes on the costs and externalities of development – is provided. Instead of selling land, public sector land purchase and effective value capture would give greater control over outcomes and moderate the high cost of land that underpins the housing crisis.
Fourthly, private renting is the last great unmodernised industry, with outdated standards and management. Labour should now go well beyond the 2015 ‘Miliband’ reforms. There is better understanding now of how other countries successfully regulate rents without undermining the market. Tenancies should be longer, grounds for eviction clearer and rules concerning harassment and illegal eviction tougher. Crucially, there should be a revolution in standards. Landlords should be licensed, with a crack-down on letting hazardous or non-decent homes. We don’t accept hazardous food or cars, why allow hazardous homes?
Fifthly, there is the whole question of rents and benefits. Out of control house values and dysfunctionality mean that intervention in ‘market’ rents is justified. The Tory policy of linking public rents to market rents is not rational. Instead, council and housing association charges should be linked to the collective cost of provision plus a return to encourage further investment. Subsidy is needed to get the homes built but then they will ‘wash their own face’ for decades to come. Rent setting should be open and predictable with tenants in comparable properties paying comparable rents. Vicious benefit caps, which penalise people with little or no choice in the housing market – should be ended. Over time the subsidy system should move ‘from benefits to bricks’ – supporting greater supply at lower rents, reducing the need for benefits.
That’s five for starters. So many other areas could be mentioned – including rights for homeless people, the crisis in estate regeneration, construction standards, the use of energy, and how to promote ‘yimbyism’ (yes in my backyard). It’s a debate to which we can all contribute.
Finally, Tory policies have been piecemeal, forged around soundbites. The more they mention strategy the less there is of it. Labour should develop a comprehensive housing strategy, with a strong emphasis on important regional variations, which takes a clear view of future investment needs and how they will be met, adopts a balanced view of tenure with fair treatment for renters and owners, and has as a core principle that there must be a decent housing solution for everyone, irrespective of their position on the income distribution.
Housing is central to the pursuit of equality, social justice, economic progress, health and well-being. We do not have to go on as we are. As Anthony Crosland showed all those years ago, other choices are available.
March 2017

A previous post on the legacy of Anthony Crosland – A Basic Right of Citizenship – can be found here, together with a fascinating comment from Brian Lund, who very fairly disagrees with some of my points. Brian’s latest excellent book – Understanding housing policy (Understanding Welfare: Social Issues, Policy and Practice series) is now available on Amazon and on Kindle.

A Parliamentary Question on homelessness today from Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh either caught the Prime Minister unbriefed or showed how totally complacent she is about the growing numbers of people being left without a home.
McDonagh’s question (view here) came from the Corbyn mould, being based on the experience of a constituent. She asked:

Last week, through no fault of her own, Amy and her young daughter became homeless. After months of looking for a flat, she finally went to Merton Council, who told her they could only offer temporary accommodation in Birmingham, 140 miles away from her job, from her daughter’s school, and from the friends and family that make it possible for her to be a working single mum. Can I ask the Prime minister, in one of the richest cities in the world, where Russian oligarchs and Chinese banks own scores of properties and leave them empty, how can it be right that a London-born, working family like Amy have not a room to live’.

And Theresa May replied

Well the issue obviously of housing in the London borough of Merton is one that the Honourable Lady and I worked on many years ago when we were on the Housing Committee together, and I recognise that she has raised a concern for her particular constituent. Obviously I won’t comment on the individual case, but what I will say is that what’s important is that overall the government is dealing with the issue of homelessness, we are ensuring that we are building more homes, we are giving more support to people to get into their own homes, but this is something that will take time as we ensure that those properties are available and as we ensure that we maintain the record that we have of providing housing support across all types of housing in this country.’

So Amy will have to wait. Given that she probably needs an affordable rather than a market home, she will have to wait a long time. Given that she probably needs a rented home, May’s ‘more support’ doesn’t apply to her. And as for the government’s record of ‘providing housing support across all types of housing’, it must have slipped her mind that most government support now goes to propping up the housing market while renters are subject to ever growing list of caps, freezes and exclusions.
The answer is doubly disappointing because this week there has been something of a focus on homelessness. The second overview of housing exclusion in Europe by FEANTSA – which was well reviewed by Dawn Foster for the Guardian Housing Network – showed how homelessness is rising and reaching a crisis point across Europe – except Finland, where new approaches are being tried – especially in big cities. The UK features badly, being near the bottom of the European rankings. This should be ringing alarm bells everywhere, but especially in countries like ours that are doing particularly badly.
Meanwhile,  the latest Housing Monitor from Crisis and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported that councils were finding it increasingly difficult to find accommodation in the private rented sector for a wide range of homeless people, from single people to large families, and that the roll out of Universal Credit and the next round of benefit cuts would make matters worse. It quotes one south of England council respondent as saying: “LHA (Local Housing Allowance) is staggeringly out of step with actual market rents, to the extent that there are virtually no properties… let at LHA rates. Coupled with landlords’ increasing reluctance to accept people on benefits, and unwillingness to offer anything beyond an initial 6 month AST (Assured Shorthold Tenancy), it is now all but impossible to place people into the private sector.”
McDonagh tweeted that Theresa May’s response was ‘completely inadequate’. Given that Theresa May should also be aware that the Homelessness Reduction Bill (a worthy piece of legislation which will be overwhelmed by the reality of rising numbers as soon as it reaches the Statute Book) is due its Third Reading in the House of Lords tomorrow and will receive Royal Assent shortly, the phrase ‘completely inadequate’ is about as mild a term as she could have chosen.

Even with the most knowledgeable of housing audiences, eyes tend to glaze over whenever the issue of land is raised. To most it is just a huge expense and a barrier to building more homes. Not many people understand how the land market in the UK operates and how it impacts not only the housing market but also the wider economy. I studied the ‘economics of location’ as part of my degree but I still put this issue in the box marked ‘too difficult’ or ‘might try to understand that one day’.
Fortunately, more housing people are looking at the issue these days and there is some hope that an effective land policy might emerge as a result. Last week I reviewed Duncan Bowie’s new book, which has a lot to say about land and planning for housing, and this week another highly relevant new book is published  by Zed Books called ‘Rethinking the economics of land and housing’ (also available on Amazon and Kindle) by Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd and Laurie Macfarlane with the New Economics Foundation.
It’s good to know from some of the early reviews that the book is highly accessible given the dryness of the subject (mine hasn’t arrived yet – I decided it wasn’t the sort of thing I’d want to read electronically) but Toby Lloyd has written an excellent taster for the Guardian.
Toby starts by recounting the many housing policies that have failed to meet the promise of solving the housing shortage and traces their failure back to our inability to address the role of land in the economy.

Land is obviously important for housebuilding, but the land problem goes much deeper than our housing shortage. It lies right at the heart of many of the economic problems we face today. Financial instability, mounting inequality, debt overhangs and the puzzle of stagnant productivity are all direct results of our failure to properly account for and manage land in the modern economy.

He traces the history of land ownership and the role it has played in impoverishing people as any additional value that they managed to create from the land was quickly absorbed by rising rents. He looks at the various attempts to justify private land ownership as the driving force transferred from agriculture to housing and notes the importance of partial public ownership in maintaining land supply. He traces the development of boom and bust in housing and the importance of financial deregulation in creating the over-investment in residential property that we suffer from today.
Lloyd argues that land is inherently scarce and its control inherently political: the normal rules of supply and demand are inoperable and the market is inevitably both dysfunctional and volatile. We therefore have ‘to break the positive feedback cycle between the financial system, land values and the wider economy, and to capture more of the unearned windfalls private landowners currently pocket at the expense of society at large.’ That can only come through financial regulation, tax reform and more direct intervention.
Lloyd ends with the famous description by Winston Churchill of land ownership as ‘the mother of all monopolies’. Churchill’s speech – delivered in 1909 – is one of the great reads,  hugely ahead of its time and still relevant today.

Churchill (1909) complained of the ‘enrichment which comes to the landlord who happens to own a plot of land on the outskirts or at the centre of one of our great cities, who watches the busy population around him making the city larger, richer, more convenient, more famous every day, and all the while sits still and does nothing.’

‘Enrichment without service’ is still a primary feature of land ownership. More than a century after Churchill’s prescient analysis, the time has come for all of us to get to grips with the issue, and this book will help us do it.

This week saw the 40^th anniversary of the death of Anthony Crosland. He served as a Cabinet Minister in the 1960s and 1970s Labour Governments, including as Foreign Secretary (dying in Office in 1977), President of the Board of Trade, Environment Secretary, and Education Secretary, where he made great strides towards comprehensive education.

Normally regarded as a Gaitskellite revisionist, Crosland’s famous book The Future of Socialism, published in 1956, had a great influence on me when I read it in the 1970s. His central contention was that socialism should be about ‘ends’ not ‘means’; it should not be equated simply with the ownership of the means of production but should be judged by its contribution to ending poverty and improving the lives and prospects of ordinary people through the provision of the high quality public services across the board. His beliefs were put into practice as Education Secretary through his determination to replace Grammar Schools with a system of properly funded local Comprehensives, and as Environment Secretary in the 1974 minority Labour Government when he pursued a progressive housing policy.
Crosland also wrote a seminal Fabian pamphlet in 1971 called ‘Towards a Labour Housing Policy.’ (Herbert Morrison Memorial Lecture, Fabian Tract 410, available in the LSE Digital Library). This pamphlet was hugely influential at the time but it also has many resonances today.
Writing more than a year into the Heath Government, Crosland reflected on the 1964-70 Labour Government’s record – a huge building programme achieved, with increased subsidies that ‘helped keep council rents at reasonable levels’; increased help for new home owners through the Option Mortgage scheme and 100% mortgages, taking home ownership above 50% for the first time; increased help through improvement grants and the 1969 Act’s general improvement area programme; greater security of tenure and fair rents for private tenants under the 1965 Rent Act.
Yet, he argued, these achievements did not mean that Labour had solved the housing problem: far from it, major changes were needed to future housing policy. He referenced homelessness, overcrowding and insecurity; the too-slow action on slum clearance (despite also saying that ‘we have had too much of the bulldozer’); housing subsidies that ‘did not reach down to the poorest families’; and inequity between tenures: home owners received indiscriminate tax relief, council rents were a muddle with inconsistent practice around the country, there was little help with rent for private tenants, and furnished tenants remained outside the Rent Acts.
He started his assessment of future policy needs by stating the duty of government: to make sure needs are met and to tackle poverty and squalor.

‘It must be possible – indeed it is in our view a basic right of citizenship – for every household…. to have a minimum civilised standard of dwelling adequate for a decent comfortable and private household life.’

He then sets the need for government action against the failings of the free market:

‘(Our objectives) will not be met by the free play of market forces. A free market is wholly irrelevant to the most urgent problem, since the homeless and the over crowded are generally poor people who could not conceivably afford the market price of decent housing.’
So we cannot have a market solution to the housing problem. Some part of the building programme must be public: some part of the housing stock must be leased or owned at less than the economic cost: and the government must bear a final responsibility for the overall housing situation.’

So what did he advocate? Here are some of his practical policy proposals:

• A third force between councils and owner occupation and a less marginal role for housing associations;
• A strategic role for councils as well as their traditional role of building and managing homes, together with stronger metropolitan and regional planning for new homes;
• Stronger default powers when councils fail to deliver homes;
• A reorganisation of finance so that the most hard-pressed areas receive the greatest aid;
• Greater involvement of community and neighbourhood organisations in the design of urban renewal;
• Bring housing together with other aspects of urban poverty and deprivation.
• Resist the Heath government’s plans to increase council rents: Labour should end the relationship between public rents and private rents – ‘there is no analogy here’; low rents essential to keep the pressure off the rebates system, otherwise the rebate scheme will have to cover even those on average earnings; Tory rents will lead to council housing making a profit and subsidising the Exchequer.
• Welcome the extension of rebates to private tenants, but there should be strict regulations over the fixing of rents and the state of repair. Furnished tenants, excluded from the Tory proposal, should be fully included.
• Tackle the unfair and indiscriminate subsidy to home owners through mortgage interest tax relief.

It was a strong programme then, and Crosland later went some way towards delivering it during his time as Secretary of State for the Environment. Extraodinarily, it has many echoes now 45 years later. And the fundamentals on which his policy platform was based – government subsidy to ensure many more homes are built, housing costs that were affordable without means testing, linking housing to other policy areas like social services, the economy and the physical environment, and the principle of equitable treatment between tenures – stand the test of time.
As a supposed revisionist in the 1960s and 1970s Crosland would probably be denounced as a leftie now, such is the distance that the political centre has moved in the meantime. But his practical and fair policy proposals, with just a little updating, were sufficiently prescient to guide us now.

Duncan Bowie displays his encyclopaedic knowledge of planning and housing in his excellent new book ‘Radical Solutions to the Housing Supply Crisis’, much of which is derived from the work of the ‘Highbury Group’ of planning academics and practitioners that he convenes.

Bowie takes a long view of the housing supply crisis, looking back at the inadequate policies of governments of both persuasions over several decades. He sees ‘ideological continuities’ in policy since the 1970s but reserves his particular ire for the current Government’s policies as contained in the 2016 Housing and Planning Act. He criticises all governments for giving over-riding priority to the promotion of home ownership at the expense of a broader and deeper housing strategy. Even in its own terms the fixation with home ownership has failed over the last dozen years, as home ownership has declined, but this has brought about little apparent change in thinking. He criticises the long term switch from subsidising bricks and mortar (investment) to personal subsidies (housing benefit) and, even worse, to self-defeating subsidies designed to stimulate demand for home ownership. He criticises government approaches to the planning system for making private capital more powerful and the public sector weaker and more reactive, and argues that ‘localism’ cannot deliver social justice. He traces the growing abuse of the term ‘affordable’, which has been taken to Orwellian levels in last week’s White Paper (“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Unaffordable is affordable” he might have said.)
Bowie’s book is an interesting read from the start, full of policy scrutiny, but the book comes alive when he moves on to make a passionate case for a wholly new strategy. Based on a set of principles derived from the historical analysis, he makes the case for a much larger number of new homes but he puts the strongest emphasis on homes being genuinely affordable. The first action of a new government should be to switch subsidies from market or slightly sub- market provision to social rented homes at ‘target’ rents. In the long term, over a period of thirty years, funding should be switched gradually from personal subsidies to investment subsidies, providing housing that is genuinely affordable. Instead of counting anything which is in the slightest sub-market, as the White Paper does, Bowie reverts to the definition contained in the first (Livingstone) London Plan that housing costs should not exceed 30% of the net household income of the lowest quartile households. However, his central case is for a new spatial planning system with a National Spatial Plan and effective structures at regional, city region and local levels, with significantly stronger requirements for collaboration between authorities – effectively allowing a ‘right to grow’. He argues for a much clearer relationship between local plans and neighbourhood plans, avoiding the latter becoming a mechanism by which wealthy residential populations protect themselves from development that might benefit disadvantaged people. He also makes the case for councils taking an equity stake in larger new developments, looking to benefit from long term capital appreciation rather than initial levies.
As you would expect, Bowie does not duck the question of land. He supports the Lyons Commission proposal that there should be a cap on the value that can be gained by a landowner, for example when agricultural land is rezoned for housing, with the land coming into public ownership where necessary (eg if it remains unused). Published planning policies and conditions should aim to minimise land price inflation based on ‘hope’ value. Viability assessments, where needed, should be fully transparent, and he argues that taking development taxes (whatever system is used) at the point that the increased value is realised rather than when schemes are started would help developers to bring forward more schemes. Public land should be released for housing on the basis of meeting defined public objectives rather than just being put up for market sale, and councils should have far more flexible powers to undertake prudential borrowing for their own developments. Property taxes generally, he argues, need urgent reform, especially the hugely out-of-date council tax valuation system. Stamp duty hits households when they are at their most extended and there is a much stronger case for a tax on capital gain on disposal, starting at a high threshold to avoid penalising people on the margins of home ownership. Reforms to other taxes that impact on property, like inheritance tax, are also considered.
The current chronic lack of housing provision has been four decades in the making and will take many years to put right. Bowie’s central case is that wholesale radical reform is essential which will bring about an integrated approach between housing, planning, land, taxation and social security. It will be possible to argue about the nuances of every point, but it is rare to see such a clear programme of action proposed in one slim volume (and there isn’t space in a short review to mention many important points).
The book could be called ‘common sense solutions’ rather than ‘radical solutions’ because  almost everyone knows that these issues must be tackled at some point. But can they become a winning programme for a future Labour Government? Proposals like applying capital gains tax to first homes would meet a hysterical reaction even if there are clear offsets like abolishing stamp duty. Council tax reform has been avoided by every party for the last thirty years due to fear of adverse reaction (even if gainers and losers cancel each other out). The housing supply problem will not be solved by a cautious approach, but our political and media culture induces panic unless proposals are carefully worked out and presented convincingly and with enough conviction to overcome the inevitable reactionary storm. After Lyons, and with contributions like this one, Labour now has an excellent stock of possible policies to put together into a strategy. The earlier that task is undertaken the more time there will be to convince the public. A bold approach to housing could be key to turning Labour’s fortunes.

Here are some initial reactions to the White Paper published today, having also listened to Sajid Javid’s statement at lunchtime. 

Almost every news programme and every newspaper has previewed the Housing White Paper, published today, in excitable terms, building expectations that something dramatic was about to happen. It seems they all believed the spin that the Government was to take radical and bold action to ‘fix the broken housing market’. Housing Minister Gavin Barwell in particular has been talking a good game over the weekend, and nearly sounded convincing.
But in the event the 100+ page White Paper is a huge disappointment, a damp squib, a fuss about nothing. It reinvents the idea that local authorities should undertake standardised housing needs assessments, pinches but waters down some private rented sector proposals made by Ed Miliband at the 2015 General Election and promises a huge number of consultations on future changes (mainly to detailed planning regulations) – well, they’ve only been in for 7 years, it’s too much to hope they know what they’re doing by now.
Most of the rest of it is the same old words, spoken by Housing Ministers back to the venerable Grant Shapps, but in a slightly different order: simplify planning, make more land available, release public land, strong protection for green belt, stronger voice for communities, better use of land, providing infrastructure, tackling skills shortages, more small builders, custom building, more institutional investors, making renting fairer, it goes on and on.

The Government is reinventing a square wheel. It didn’t work the first time and it won’t work now.

The White Paper is mainly about housebuilding, and a bit about private renting. It has next to nothing to say about making housing genuinely affordable. It continues the failed policy of pouring money into supporting demand for home ownership whilst allocating a pittance to new genuinely affordable supply. It has nothing to say about the horrific implications of welfare reform or the relationship between housing affordability and the benefits system.
Social rented housing make a single appearance in the White Paper, but only in the section on plans to ‘redefine’ affordable housing.
Continuing the current debasement of the language, affordable housing is to be defined as including many things that are not affordable at all.
Affordable housing will be defined as including:

• Social rented housing (determined by guideline target rents)
• Affordable Rented housing (let to the same eligible people as social rented but with rents at no more than 80% of local market rents)
• Starter homes (to be restricted to those with maximum household incomes of £80K, £90K in London)
• Discounted market sales housing (discount of at least 20% from market value)
• Affordable private rent housing (at least 20% below market rent)
• Intermediate housing (sale or rent at costs above social rent but below market).

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

In a week when there was a lot to be ashamed about, and especially the supine performance of the Prime Minister during and following her visit to Trump, today’s report of the Home Office Select Committee on the accommodation provided to asylum seekers should make us reflect on our own moral worth as a country. As we rightly rail against the inhumanity of Trump’s refugee ban, here at home we are guilty of treating victims of torture and others who have been ripped from their homelands by war and oppression with our own version of merciless cruelty.
People seeking asylum in the UK are eligible for Home Office support if they can prove they are destitute. They may be entitled to receive £36.95 a week – which means they could afford tea for one at the Ritz, but only once a fortnight – and accommodation. Accommodation is provided through six regional COMPASS contracts (Commercial and Operational Managers Procuring Asylum Support Services). The contracts were won by Serco, G4S and Clearsprings Group. They procure their accommodation through sub-contractors and private landlords. The contractors reported to the Select Committee that they were losing money heavily on the contracts, and the Government is seeking further major cuts in the overall budget.

The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 sets out three circumstances under which asylum seekers are entitled to accommodation:

• while the Home Office is considering whether an individual is eligible for support (Section 98 of the Act)

• while the Home Office is assessing the application (Section 95), and

• when the application for asylum has been refused but the applicant has yet to leave the country (Section 4).

(quotes and chart from from Select Committee report)

The vast majority of people are housed under Section 95 and the number of people accommodated on this basis has almost doubled over the lifetime of the COMPASS contracts (see Figure 1 from Select Committee report).
No’ people provided with dispersed accommodation under S 95, by quarter
The combination of the policy to disperse asylum seekers around the regions, the reducing Government budget, the rising numbers, and the losses faced by the companies, make it inevitable that the poorest accommodation in the cheapest areas will be procured. Genuine dispersal is also limited by local authority interest: in G4S’s areas, only 27 out of 135  authorities have agreed to accept asylum accommodation. G4S described the unwillingness of councils as ‘entrenched’. The outcome is that serious pressures are being faced by councils in poorer areas who have agreed to participate – as ‘clustering’ is leading to high demand for local services. It is yet another example of Government passing costs down without funding to local areas. Although many more councils have been willing to take Syrian refugees (so far the numbers are small, and its a better funded system), the Select Committee calls the wider system ‘unfair’ with many councils taking no asylum seeker at all.
The Select Committee details many of the problems in the process but focusses on the frequently poor standards. A significant number remain in temporary accommodation for months before becoming ‘settled’: these are often hotels where residents have inadequate amenities and space and find it extremely difficult to access suitable food and health and education services.

The evidence we have received suggests that some of the premises used by Providers as temporary accommodation are substandard and unfit to house anyone, let alone people who are vulnerable.

‘Dispersal accommodation’ into which asylum seekers are settled is meant to meet strict inspection standards and should meet the decent homes standard and be fit for purpose. However the Select Committee received evidence that people were being placed in accommodation that was unfit for human habitation with bad maintenance, well beyond a few isolated cases. Common problems identified included infestations of mice rats and bedbugs, dirty premises, and inadequate furnishings. One case of a known asbestos risk was also reported, but many of the dwellings were thought to have an adverse health impact.

It is clear that in too many cases Providers are placing people in accommodation that is substandard, poorly maintained and, at times, unsafe. Some of this accommodation is a disgrace and it is shameful that some very vulnerable people have been placed in such conditions. Urgent action must be taken by the Home Office and Providers to deal with this issue.

Single adults, often vulnerable, frequently have to share bedrooms, often with people they do not know from different countries or religions.

The system of allocating properties strikes us as chaotic.

If asylum seekers end up in a small proportion of authority areas, it cannot properly be called a dispersal system. Birmingham, Bolton. Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Rochdale all have over 1,000, whilst wealthier places like Windsor and Maidenhead (containing Theresa May’s seat), Surrey South West (Jeremy Hunt), Epson and Ewell (Chris Grayling), and many others, have zero.
The number of asylum seekers in each area resembles an inverse list of the wealthiest areas in the UK. So perhaps we shouldn’t be too smug in our moral superiority in relation to Trump: just as the richest nation on earth is keeping out refugees, so are the richest towns in Britain.