The Mayor's Housing Strategy: Top ten things you should know
The Mayor's London Housing Strategy sets out how the city will cope with huge population growth. From home ownership to rental standards, here are the top ten things you need to know about it.
1. London's housing challenge
London's housing challenge is down to huge growth in its population and jobs. There are forecast to be nine million Londoners by 2020 and ten million by 2031, while London’s booming economy is creating hundreds of thousands of jobs a year.
2. Coping with population growth
To cope, we need to build at least 42,000 new homes a year for the next 20 years. Only in the 1930s did we ever build more, and that was in the form of massive sprawling suburbs. We can’t do that again, so must be far more creative in boosting supply.
3. Affordable homes
London’s housing is among the most expensive in the world. To help, we’ll put 45,000 affordable homes on the ground between 2015 and 2018, with 60 per cent for rent and 40 per cent low cost home ownership (FIRST STEPS).
4. Helping Londoners into home ownership
We’ll give working Londoners more priority for affordable homes and help more of them into home ownership. By 2020, we’ll double the number of FIRST STEPS homes offered each year, and double that again by 2025 to help 250,000 Londoners ono the property ladder.
5. London needs more financial independence
London has far less financial independence than other major world cities, and even less than Scotland or Wales, making it much more difficult to meet our housing needs. The Mayor wants a permanent financial settlement from national government so London can take control of all its property taxes.
6. Improving rental standards
Our new London Rental Standard will improve management standards in the city’s growing private rented sector. We’ve set a target to accredit 100,000 landlords and lettings agents by 2016.
7. Tackling rough sleeping
We’ll work with councils and other partners to make sure that no-one new to the streets sleeps rough for a second night, no-one lives on the streets of London and the number of new rough sleepers is minimised.
8. Housing zones
We’ll boost the number of homes through a range of ‘Housing Zones’ nominated by boroughs, with new approaches to planning, land assembly, funding and taxation.
9. A better private rented sector
We’ll build a better private rented sector by encouraging institutional investment in new bespoke private rented developments, including on the Mayor’s land.
10. Making good use of public land
We’ll make sure that publicly-owned land in London is brought forward for housing where appropriate. Every Mayor-owned site will have an exit strategy in place by 2016.
Want to know more? Read the Mayor's London Housing Strategy in full.