Saturday, December 29, 2018

Unaffordable Houses


Just 5 per cent of homes to be built with government money will be the most affordable type of housing despite the prime minister’s pledge to build a “new generation of social homes“, ministers have admitted.
The government said only 12,500 of the 250,000 homes to be built with the affordable homes budget by 2022 will be social homes – equivalent to 2,500 per year.
The other 237,500 are likely to be more costly “affordable homes”, which can be sold for hundreds of thousands of pounds or rented out at up to 80 per cent of full market value.

There were 1,409 social homes built in England last year. With ministers now promising a total of around 2,500 per year until 2022, it means the increased funding will deliver only an additional 1,000 each year.
Housing charities condemned the revelation that the government will only fund 2,500 new social homes per year.
Greg Beales, campaign director of Shelter, said: “The gap between the number of social homes we need in this country and how many get built is vast. In fact, we delivered 84 per cent fewer social homes this year than in 2010. This is totally unacceptable when hundreds of thousands of people are homeless and millions more are struggling in unstable and expensive private renting."
Jon Sparkes, chief executive of homelessness charity Crisis, said: “It is very disappointing to see such a tiny proportion of the properties to be delivered through the Affordable Homes Programme being made available for social rent. Research shows we need 90,000 social homes built every year for the next 15 years to meet demand – both for those experiencing homelessness, and for those on low incomes, many of whom are at risk of homelessness. The current lack of genuinely affordable housing is leaving thousands living on a knife-edge, unable to keep up with spiralling rents and housing costs.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-housing-social-homes-spending-5-per-cent-affordable-council-theresa-may-conference-a8689591.html

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