Red BrickThis blog has often made the case for housing investment to stimulate economic growth and boost employment.
Housing, pound for pound, creates a lot of employment and as we’ve said many times before housing pays for itself, even social housing. It’s why I don’t like the term subsidy; it’s investment, which pays back and provides a return (if over several decades).
If policies alone decided Elections, Ken Livingstone would be romping home as the next London Mayor.
Instead he faces a photo finish with Tory Boris Johnson. ‘Look at Boris, isn’t he a laugh’ is no way to run one of the world’s five greatest cities. But his celebrity status only tells half the story: Johnson is a cunning and ambitious right wing Tory who is running an unremittingly negative campaign with such hugely powerful media support that even people on own Ken’s side start to believe some of the things that are said.
Ken has always had an extraordinary ability to define the policy needs of the moment. On fares, he saw that the need in the 1980s was to use spare capacity and get people back on the tube again; by 2000 the need was for massive investment in new services; and now in 2012 the need is to put money back into the pockets of struggling Londoners.
By guest blogger Monimbo
As well as being the catchy phrase that was evidently used on a 1945 Labour election poster, Let’s Build the Houses – Quick! is a new publication by Cathy Davis and Alan Wigfield from Spokesman Books. It looks at the failures of recent housing policy and calls for a massive new building programme from the next Labour government.
Red Brick readers will sympathise with the main line of argument, which is that Labour didn’t build enough social housing, the Tories are doing much worse still and the main component of a sensible housing policy should be to put that right.
Ealing Council should retain its commitment to social rented homes and security of tenure in its own stock. That’s the foremost recommendation from the report of the Council’s Housing Commission, published this week after a year of research and debate.
I often find two opposing knee-jerk reactions to housing when I go to Labour meetings and events. They hinge around council housing – and are lightening rods for other ideological debates.
Some members when they hear people arguing for more council housing and greater power for councils to build homes again, seem to think that this is an old Labour plot to drag Labour back to 1983 and anti-aspirational, left-wing electoral oblivion. Dennis MacShane’s article yesterday implicitly recognises that tendency in parts of the last Labour government.
The internet is getting increasingly littered with dead websites from now defunct social housing regulators. The Tenant Services Authority closed on 31 March and its functions transferred to a new Committee of the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). Its website remains as a record of activity, just as the Housing Corporation’s web content remains online following its demise back in November 2008.
Another king is dead, long live the new king, this time the snappily titled HCA Regulation Committee, whose new regulatory framework for social housing came into effect along with other Localism Act changes on April 1st.
It’s amazing how many people think that only those who are economically inactive can claim housing benefit. But then again all the rhetoric about cuts to HB and to Local Housing Allowance (HB for private tenants) has been about tenants living in something called ‘benefit dependency’, being feather bedded and given so much money that they can afford to live in places that ‘hard working families’ couldn’t afford to live.
By guest blogger Monimbo
Take a clutch of housing policies for which this government might like to be remembered: rewarding work, mobility for tenants looking for jobs, creating ‘flexible’ tenancies, allowing councils to set local lettings policies and decide who qualifies for housing, setting ‘Affordable’ rents and assessing potential tenants’ incomes, and cutting waiting lists. Apart from all being championed by Mr Shapps, most of these policies are now embodied in the Localism Act and all of them depend crucially on councils’ allocations processes if they are to be put into effect.
The National Planning Policy Framework, the final version of which was published – and comes into effect – today, is good at polarising opinion. As someone who thinks we haven’t built enough homes for a generation, under Governments of both Parties, the apparent determination to build more houses is appealing. A small part of me admires Planning Minister Greg Clark’s willingness to take on some traditional Tory interests in his attempt to do so.
By Lord Whitty
This is the 300th blog post on Red Brick since our launch. We are delighted to welcome Lord Larry Whitty as the guest author of this landmark post.
Larry is Chair of Housing Voice, the affordable homes alliance. Members of the Alliance include Citizens Advice, the National Housing Federation, UNISON, CPAG, TPAS, TUC, CDS co-operatives, NUS. He previously wrote about Housing Voice on Red Brick here and we covered the launch of their inquiry here. 
The independent inquiry into the affordable homes crisis being carried out by Housing Voice is now at its mid point. Evidence has been received from a wide range of housing bodies, tenants groups, unions and advocacy organisations. Hearings have been held in the South and the North. We have two further hearings to go – in London on 29th March and in Birmingham on 30th March – register here . In addition to the hearings, the inquiry continues to receive hundreds of completed questionnaires from members of the public, who have participated on-line, or via paper surveys provided in Citizen Advice surgery waiting rooms.