Government Failing Miserably In The Face Of Growing Housing Crisis

There are 1.7m households on council waiting lists, homelessness has grown by 68 per cent since 2009 and last year’s house building figures were the lowest since the Second World War and 45 per cent down on 2008 when the financial crisis hit. The chancellor’s Budget response was to announce a series of small loan funds aimed at pet projects – £525m development finance to encourage small and medium size builders, £150m to help self-builders and an inadequate loan pot for the private sector to become involved in inner city estate regeneration. Alongside this, the prime minister’s on-off romance with garden cities finally blossomed with one now planned for Kent, although when it will be built is debatable given the growing nimbyism in Tory ranks. The extension of the Help to Buy scheme for would-be home owners to 2020, at an estimated cost of £6bn is an ineffective means of increasing affordable housing supply but highly efficient at stimulating demand and inflating house prices. It worsens rather than tackles the underlying affordability problem in the UK’s housing market. Read more on the Left Foot Forward blog.