Housing Voice ‘To Have or Have Not? Taking Responsibility for Tomorrow's Affordable Homes Today"

I left TUC Congress early today to return to London for this morning's launch of the Housing Voice report at the House of Commons.

Housing Voice is an independent affordable housing alliance with cross party political support. For the past year they have carried out a national inquiry, taking evidence up and down the Country.

Over 60 organisations and 3000 individuals have given evidence. Today the report was published. I was there to make a response on behalf of UNISON. This is the press release and full report.

 

There was around 40 people present including MPs from all the main political parties. On the main panel was Liberal Democratic Stephen Gilbert MP (who said he was the only MP to be still living at home with his parents), Conservative Mark Pawsey MP and Labour Shadow Housing Minister, Jack Dromey MP. 

Not everyone agreed with everything in the report but there was more consensus than I expected.

There is lots and lots of good proposals but one of the big ideas is to use £5 billion of the recently announced £50 billion in Quantitative Easing (QE) to buy low interest housing bonds rather than government gilts. This money is then used to invest in affordable housing. 

 

In many ways the problem and solution to the crisis in affordable housing is the bleeding obvious. There is an absolute shortage of homes in all tenures - home ownership, social housing and private rented. Nearly everyone gets this big picture, this is why nearly 50% of UNISON members have grown up children still living at home.

Supply and demand means that cost of housing in many parts of the UK is simply unaffordable.  The only market solution to reduce cost is to build more new homes. The only social solution is to build more new homes with genuinely affordable rents.

 

Over the next 3 years we will spend only £4.5 billion on building new social homes while we spend a staggering £93 billion on housing benefit.

Lord Larry Whitty introduced the report by saying such is the crisis 250k new homes are needed each year for the next 20 years. Last year only 110k were built.

 

The problem is not planning permission, nor is it a land bank (supply) problem. With huge unemployment in construction and development, capacity is not a blockage either. The problem is money.

Extra government support and QE can be used to provide that money, build affordable homes and get Britain working again. Get people off the dole and build homes, get them paying taxes and spending money in the economy. 
 

I also picked on the recommendation that pension funds are encouraged to invest in new homes. While it is the responsibly of the state to make sure and enable their citizens to have adequate shelter. I can say as a pension trustee that schemes are crying out for suitable vehicles to invest in long term, secure, inflation linked products such as residential housing.

The problem lies with many advisers and fund managers who think its all just "too difficult" and prefer investing in warehouses and retail because that is what they are use to.  Unlike the rest of the world where pension schemes actively invest in residential property.   

Appropriately the meeting stopped at 11.30 just after the Parliamentary bell rang for prayers. I'm not religious but I did have another bleeding obvious thought.

 

(I was pleased that afterwards Jack Dromey MP agreed to speak at a future meeting of my UNISON Housing Association branch). Check out Red Brick account of meeting here.

"Housing Voice" - for Affordable Housing in Britain

On Thursday I went to the Parliamentary launch of Housing Voice the Affordable Homes Alliance
in the Jubilee Room of the House of Commons.

The meeting was hosted by it's Chair - Lord Whitty (2nd right). This cross Party campaign has been formed to raise awareness of the lack of affordable homes across the UK and the need for
urgent government action. Lord Whitty also spoke at last week's UNISON housing fringe.

David Orr, the Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, Shadow Housing Minister Alison Seabeck MP (speaking) , Alison Graham of Child Poverty Action Group, Roger McKenzie, Assistant General Secretary, UNISON and Stephen Gilbert, the Liberal Democrat Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing spoke at the launch.

UNISON sponsored the launch and YouGov research which has showed that:-

• 71% of the public do not think the Coalition Government is giving much attention to affordable housing
• For those in private rented accommodation affordable housing is their biggest concern after the economy – 40% compared to 28% for health and 18% for education
• Building more homes for rent would be a very popular policy with 70% support - including a majority of supporters of the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats or Labour
• Given a list of possible policies, less than half (40%) supported the idea of increasing supply by moving people from their council or housing association homes once their incomes rise above a certain limit
• A massive 18% - almost 1 in 5 – always or often struggle to pay their rent or mortgage

"The Housing Voice campaign aims to become a forum for ideas and a vehicle for action in order to build public awareness and push for urgent Government action to deliver more affordable housing"

So all good stuff. What I found interesting was:- Lib Dem Stephen Gilbert MP recognising that we have 250k new households per year but we are only building 125k new homes per year; Alison Seabeck MP thinks that there are votes to be won in planning but too many MPs think it will lose them votes.

David Orr pointed out that countries such as Finland and Norway plan to build 7 homes per 1,000 population to adequately house their people. This would have meant the equivalent of 420k new homes in the UK. We only built 100k last year - the smallest number since 1923 - when our population was half it is now.

Former Housing officer, now an Assistant General Sectary of UNISON, Roger McKenzie, reminded everyone that we we do live in one of the richest countries on the planet but if people do not have dignity, jobs and homes then life becomes intolerable.

Alison Graham of CPAG pointed out how can children who live in awful housing succeed in education if they smell of damp. (Which as a housing officer I know what she means) Toby Lloyd of Shelter was really pleased that at this launch that there was a wide spread of players and not the usual "housing suspects".

  

Finally, in the Q&A I mentioned that there seems to be a clear connection between countries cited in the debate who have good housing policies for all and are also those countries who are more successful because they are more equal. This would seem to support the arguments put forward in "The Spirit Level" book that societies that are more equal are simply better for everyone - rich and poor.

Update: forgot to add that Alison Seabeck MP had previously agreed to be a guest speaker at a UNISON Housing Association Branch Labour Link meeting, which we now hope will take place early September.