Labour are choosing to let London’s housing crisis get worse
The Chancellor and the Mayor can choose to scrap affordable housing targets, abolish stamp duty, fast-track homes on state-owned land and reform the mortgage market. Or it can choose to let the housing crisis get worse, says Lord Bailey
Housing and getting more homes built has been my passion from the moment I entered politics. Having been homeless myself, and having been a youth worker for over 30 years beforehand, I know first-hand the difference a safe and secure home makes to someone’s prospects in life. Everything leads back to having a home of your own.
In London, we have a housing crisis, and we have had one for many years. What we also now have is a housebuilding crisis – an inherent and chronic issue within our capital city and its planning system which means we simply cannot build homes anymore, let alone the number of homes we actually need.
Shockingly, just five per cent of the 88,000 homes the government says London needs each year are set to be built in 2025. The capital is now building the fewest homes of any English region per capita. The dream of home ownership has never been so far away. Today I am publishing my new report, Get London Building, which puts forward radical solutions to tackle this problem.
Calling for more ‘affordable’ (subsidised) housing targets sounds like it might be the solution. What it doesn’t do is get more affordable housing built or make housing more affordable to buy – it does the opposite. You may support more subsidised housing at first glance or in principle, until you realise you fund it through your taxes, but you would never be eligible for it yourself. It actively makes trying to buy a home on the market more difficult.
Get serious
This has got to change. Abolishing these targets would immediately make developments more viable and substantially increase the number of homes built which Londoners could actually buy themselves, increasing the chances of getting on the housing ladder.
Land the Mayor, the GLA and TfL already own could be used to fast-track 75,000 homes and identify sites for new villages across London. The government funding the DLR extension to Thamesmead in the upcoming Budget would immediately unlock 15,000 homes. These are huge tasks but they are achievable.
Abolishing stamp duty, utilising the Mayor’s Adult Skills Fund to help address industry shortages, reducing the costs of development, promoting mansard extensions which are already allowed in legislation and making unelected quangos more accountable and transparent would all help to make a practical difference, and could all be done relatively easily.
Modernising the mortgage market by offering more flexible and lower deposit mortgage options (especially for middle and higher-income earners who can demonstrate affordability) and including rental payment history in mortgage applications and credit scores could be done relatively easily in the upcoming Budget, and would make a significant difference for first-time buyers and sellers alike, by increasing the number of potential buyers within the market.
Letting this housing crisis and housebuilding crisis deepen further is a choice. We do not have to make it
We must approach this housing crisis and housebuilding crisis with the sense of urgency it requires. A viable route to private homeownership and the levels of housebuilding London needs does not just benefit individuals. Ultimately, it gives us more coherent and stable communities made up of families who have invested in that area, and it is the only way government funding of housing can be viable and fair for the taxpayer at large.
For too long we have not done enough to promote the huge value we gain from building homes and communities. A small but loud minority have invested a substantial amount of time, effort and money into stopping us from building the new homes, the new infrastructure and the new communities we need. Now is the time to level the playing field and make the strongest and clearest argument possible; building homes and infrastructure unlocks substantial economic growth, supports quality job creation and actively makes places nicer. It is fundamentally a force for good.
Letting this housing crisis and housebuilding crisis deepen further is a choice. We do not have to make it. The choice we can make instead is to get serious about building, making London a far more attractive, prosperous and word-leading capital city.
Lord Bailey AM is a Londonwide Assembly Member and a Member of the House of Lords. You can read Get London Building here.