Tag Archives: right to buy

Is Right to Buy a state sponsored gentrification programme?

Posted on by • Posted in anti-social behaviour, democracy, Development, Development, District council stuff, EEC, Everyday life, housing shortage, local government, planning, public sector, South Holland, Spalding, Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , , , • Leave a comment

It’s probably a bit late to ask this question, given that this scheme has been in place for 30 years now.

That said, the proof must already be there, especially in London where working class areas, that were a foreign land for those with means, are now fashionable and sort after locations for the young professionals, earning big money.

Exposing social housing to the open market , in high demand areas, where demand is the through roof and prices constantly rising, inevitably means the original tenant, very soon becomes the ex-owner.

It might seem like a a very worthy ambition, giving everybody currently sitting at the bottom of the pile and trapped in social housing – as certain people view it – a chance to own their own home.  However, assuming that hat  was even the original intention and it wasn’t just about killing off the bulk of social housing as we knew it, it’s also had the effect of depopulating our city centre of those of modest means, otherwise known as the working classes.

So all those people who used to empty the bins, sweep the streets, dig up the roads, drive the delivery van, serve in the local shops and do the thousand and one other menial, but vital jobs that keep a city running, now live a journey away from their workplace.

in some cases that journey may mean up to an hour spent on a bus, or train, travelling in from a remote housing estate where everybody else is doing exactly the same thing.  The effect of this, is that nobody actually knows who their neighbours are anymore and therefore certainly little, or no sense of community, because there’s so little actual time spent in the company of those who live near us.

Back in what used to be the social housing areas that haven’t been flattened and turned into expensive apartment blocks for the upwardly mobile, the housing has been gutted, extended and beautified, to make it desirable and more importantly, significantly more expensive than it was.  Again, just like the workers they displaced, the lack of community will be clear, but this will be by choice in most cases, because their social lives take them elsewhere and opportunities more diverse.

Job done.  All those rundown, poorly maintained sink estates cleared out from our city centres And that ‘unpleasant’ working class riff raff removed to where it belongs, when it not actually doing the work that needs doing.

The added bonus is, those who grabbed the social housing as soon as the first tenants where starting to sell, can now maximise their returns, over and over again, by renting to the high earners who need to live close to the city centres.

If Right to Buy was really about getting those of modest means on to the housing ladder, it was a fatally flawed concept.  It depopulated our cities of the ordinary working class people, by selling off the only type of housing they could ever have afforded to live in.  If that was always the intention, shame on you Margret Thatcher.

The Housing should have been retained and those who wanted to buy their own property should have offered equivalent grant funding to purchase their own home elsewhere.  This could have been in a privately built, or publically funding housing developement, such as in the new towns.

It was claimed that this would have forced people to move out of houses, or places they’d been in for many years and possibly spent money on.  This is complete nonsense and just a smoke screen used by government to justify to the orignal scheme.

Why should social housing tenants have been given that benefit on top of the massive discounts they received for the ‘equity’ they’d supposedly built up?  How was they were any more entitle than somebody forced to rent a property in the private sector, where the end of lease meant the most you were likely to get back was your deposit if you were lucky?

 

 

 

Gary Porter goes in with guns not blazing, but definitely with the safety off

Posted on by • Posted in District council stuff, Government, local government, public sector, South Holland • Tagged , , , • Leave a comment

Copied from Local Government Chronicle online

Give us powers to boost house-building skills – Porter30 June, 2015 | By Charlotte Santry

The government faces missing its pledge on affordable homes unless it devolves more powers to local authorities, the Local Government Association chairman is set to warn.
Gary Porter (Con) is today set to use his first keynote address in his new role to urge the government to transfer more funding and responsibilities for employment and skills services to local areas.
The government’s pledge to build 275,000 affordable homes by 2020 is at risk of falling foul of a growing skills shortage in the construction industry that is holding back housebuilding, he will say.
The LGA believes greater devolved powers would allow councils, schools, employers and colleges to work together to create more construction apprenticeships and ensure communities have the skills needed to build badly needed homes.
Cllr Porter will say: “The government has expressed a clear ambition to build more affordable homes and help more people own their own home. Local government has a central role to play to make this happen.”
For too long there has been a “mismatch of centrally set training and skills needed locally”, he will state, adding: “We’ve trained too many hairdressers and not enough bricklayers.”
Cllr Porter will also call for councils’ borrowing limits to be lifted, to allow for greater investment in housing.
In addition, he wants local authorities to have the freedom to set right-to-buy discounts and retain 100% of receipts locally without complex rules, to help them to quickly replace housing sold through the scheme.
Bringing health and social care together has shown that bringing local public services together provides better value services, he will say, pointing to the better care fund.
The proposals form part of an LGA report called A Shared Commitment: Local Government and the Spending Review launched today.

Top Tory leaders admit doubts over right-to-buy extension

Posted on by • Posted in anti-social behaviour, Development, District council stuff, Environmental, Everyday life, Government, local government, planning, public sector, South Holland • Tagged , , , , , , , , • Leave a comment

For all those people who think we dance to the Party’s tune on every issue, below is an article that tells a different story.

I echo Gary’s concerns and fear that the ordinary working class people, that the cities depend on to run it’s services and pander to the needs of the rich and powerful who can afford to buy a home, no matter the price, will soon be banished to locations, not even classed as the suburbs, by this sort of policy.  London will undoubtedly lead the way, with social housing within the M25, often falling foul of the ‘most expensive on the books’ category.

Without stringent controls on these proposed sales, such as a profit claw-back clause, if the house is sold into the private sector with a certain number of years, or changes to the capital gains taxation rules, the only social housing available, will be on remote sink estates, in the back of beyond and populated by people that have no other choice available to them.  Underlying all of this, is the implausible suggestion that the sales will fund their replacement with modern, cheaper housing.  The numbers don’t add up, especially as the proposal is for the government to manage the redistribution.

Copied from Local Government Chronicle online article of 21 April, 2015 

By David Paine

 Two senior Conservative politicians have expressed doubts about their party’s proposal to extend the right-to-buy, as it emerged housing minister Kris Hopkins had previously warned the policy could mean a huge cost to the public purse.  The Conservative manifesto, published last week, said the party would force councils to sell off their most valuable homes to pay for a new right-to-buy for housing association tenants.
However, the proposal was met with widespread opposition with the National Housing Federation claiming it would make it more difficult for housing associations to borrow to build more homes. These concerns appeared to be shared by Mr Hopkins in a letter he sent to Tessa Munt, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Wells, in October 2013.
In it he said if housing associations were “obliged to consistently sell off their stock at less than market value they might find it difficult to borrow” and added that could “impact adversely” on investment in existing properties and “affect the future provision of affordable housing”.  Mr Hopkins’ letter added the government at the time did not “consider that it would be reasonable to require housing associations to sell these properties at a discount” as extending the scheme could result in “a high liability for the public purse”.
In response, Mr Hopkins said his letter showed “we would look at expanding home ownership through extending right-to-buy” and added his party’s “sensible, affordable” proposal would “ensure that housing associations are compensated”.  The maximum discount under right-to-buy on council properties is £77,900 across England, except in London boroughs where it’s £103,900.
Leader of the Local Government Association Conservative group Gary Porter told LGC he had “not fully bought in to the party’s position” while Kent CC’s leader Paul Carter told LGC he had “some empathy” with housing associations that face losing homes.  Cllr Carter said he was “a great believer in home ownership” but thought the way to “encourage more housing to be built” was to invest in infrastructure, especially transport.
Cllr Porter, leader of South Holland DC, said the right-to-buy was a “great idea and long overdue for homes that were built with public money” but added: “If they weren’t built with public money then they shouldn’t be touched, it shouldn’t apply.”  Catherine Ryder, head of policy at the National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, told LGC legislation would almost certainly have to be amended or introduced as housing associations are currently exempt from right-to-buy due to their charitable status.
Ms Ryder said extending the right-to-buy could impact on housing associations’ ability to borrow “even if the discounts are funded”. She said: “If you’re selling off your assets the certainty of your income is more difficult to predict so it’s going to be more difficult to borrow money to build new affordable homes.”  She also questioned how quickly high-value properties sold off by councils to fund the scheme would be replaced and where they would be built.
A recent survey by the Local Government Association, Chartered Institute of Housing, and the National Federation of ALMOs found only half or fewer of homes sold under the existing right-to-buy for council homes had been replaced.