Saturday, June 23, 2012

Round & Round The Houses

Here we go again, more housing insanity.....   According to this report, the latest idea is to redirect the £20billion housing benefit 'bill' into building more homes instead.



The report states:

"The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think-tank's proposal came in a report published today outlining its "radical strategy" for ending the housing crisis in the UK.

IPPR argues the housing sector's problems are multifaceted, stating: "Demand has heavily outstripped supply for decades. Homeownership is too often out of reach. Social housing is being residualised. The private rented sector remains largely unprofessional and insecure and those who live in it have too little control."

"Housing policy has been piecemeal and disjointed across various departments under governments of all colours," IPPR continued, "[and] many of the problems in English housing are deeply embedded."


Meanwhile back in the land of reality, the Empty Homes campaign highlights that there are up to 720,000 empty homes in the UK at any given time and according to the Government statistics, there were approximately 50,000 households classed as homeless in the year to December 2011, well short of the vacant property figures. This underlines again, that the issue is NOT one of a shortage of homes, but demonstrates that people have one single barrier in their way and that it money, or lack of it.


The housing and homelessness crisis will never be solved under capitalism, no matter how many think-tanks, policy reviews, brainstorms or other kinds of lunacy are thrown at it. Neither will simply building more and more and more houses make any difference, as the above figures show.

SussexSocialist

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