Affordability of housing

It is not a question of affordability but availability. When housing demand exceeds supply all housing can become unaffordable to most residents. This is clearly true when we are seeing affordable homes at the current values in most boroughs. The Mayor should use another designation when development is planned or so called regeneration takes place. That is social housing as defined by the ownership or control of properties. We should aim to be radical and refuse planning permission where developments do not contain a proportion of housing that will serve local community need not some market rate. This could be established by using metrics such as council waiting list, evictions, HMOs, average earnings, priority needs such as homelessness, disability , children or age and need for sheltered and protected homes. The housing strategy should not prioritise pocket homes or high density and height over need in a locality. Developers should have to show how their proposals will reduce these types of problems and also contribute to infrastructure improvement to reduce future council investment over time. Further, the aim should not be prefabs and rabbit hutches at tube or other transport hubs but well planned developments which meet local need whilst allowing some profit for investors. Finally, investment should not be seen as good in itself but by its continuing contribution to meeting local needs and aspirations. Therefore consultation should be real and enduring, commitments made public and investors , builders, local authorities and the Mayor made more accountable through local planning processes not the present system of often secret commercial in confidence deals that largely by pass and hood wink local populations leading to hollowing out of many areas and wholesale population cleansing as social housing reduces in scale and impact. Be bold and the people who want to make money will come forward to work in true partnership with local communities not against them.

The price of housing in London is unaffordable to most people on low and medium incomes. This is the case whether we are looking at housing to buy on the open market, or the private rented sector. Council housing is increasingly scarce, particularly with local authority borrowing caps and demolition of council estates, and housing associations are increasingly commercialised and morphing sinisterly into private housing corporations with near market level rents. Even more disturbingly, there are more and more Londoners in acute housing distress, up to and including street homelessness, which is increasing exponentially. Key factors influencing this are deregulation of private rents and the roll-out of Universal Credit. Government needs to tackle both of these urgently.

What Londoners, and people living in other cities and towns in Britain need is a new generation of council housing at low rents. This will need legislative change, which London's mayor along with other mayors should work for, to lift the local authority housing cap. Public land that becomes available MUST be used for public purposes, e.g. council housing, and NOT sold off to developers. Substantial borrowing may be necessary, but this will be offset by rental income. It will also create a virtuous circle by creating tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs for construction and associated workers who will create a demand for goods and services produced by other workers, thus growing the economy.

The Mayor must not be fixated on home ownership, This is not possible for many, whilst others have no desire to become property owners. Money for 'Starter Homes' tends to benefit the better off. Let us give the benefit to the many not the few: Build Council Housing!

Hi, I understand that we need more housing ,what I do not understand is why planning is being considered for such building as the plan put forward to Hounslow council for an 8 storey ,commercial ,residential and shops to be built on an office car park of No.21 high street in Feltham. It will overlook and tower over a junior school and playground at the rear and side and another school and playground on the side of the proposed building (with a narrow road between it and the second school). It would also be towering over Feltham Green and pond , a major green site and a winner of a Green Flag this year. Feltham has many sites that could be used and so has the rest of Hounslow. That side of the road has 4 and 5 storey blocks but at a distance from said schools ,Green and pond and do not spoil views of the area ,but even a two storey would. The other point I wish to make is that we have more then enough shops here in Feltham,

Government subsidies to support first time buyers and extremely low interest rates have increased house prices for all people.
More good quality housing needs to be built, with good size rooms and good quality materials, but not covering every patch of greenery in London. Many of the houses/flats being built are of poor quality materials and would not expect to last for 50 years, let alone the 100+ years that my Victorian house has lasted.
Making the seller pay stamp duty rather than the buyer would also put the horse before the cart - the vendor has generally made a profit on buying and selling, so why not let the Exchequer gain from that, rather than making the buyer pay? This would also reduce house prices.
Removing VAT (20%) from home improvements would also encourage better use of the existing housing stock.
Perhaps following recent incidents, people will think about fire safety (and gas, electricity and water safety too) along with the materials that are being used. In Waltham Forest (Walthamstow), there are many developments putting up new blocks of flats. The best quality ones seem to be created under an Almshouse banner where the budget seems to be ringfenced and higher build standards mandated.
Further north but still within the M25, dwellings are being built on floodplains. Some of these houses were flooded before they were even finished and sold! More intelligence (and fewer personal opinions) are needed in planning permission decisions.

Can we have an end to the nonsense that defines an affordable rent as 80% of market rent.? Overall, rents should be reduced such that they are commensurate with people's earnings. Of course some private landlords would regard such a move as an infringement of their liberty. The only answer to this is that liberty consists of a general access to goods, services and culture in the widest sense of the
term. It should not be regarded as being defined by the private ownership of property.

I have read some of the comments on here and I agree with so many of them. I live in Waltham Forest run by Labour who I thought were in favour of helping working class workers get affordable homes. The council leader cares very little for the long-term residents saying that we should just rent privately (when all we can afford is a room privately) or leave the area. So despite living and working in the borough for over 25 years I can see that the local MPs care very little about the middle and lower earners in the borough. They continue to support these unaffordable new builds labelled (SHARED OWNERSHIP) and in Waltham Forest all of the affordable and social housing goes to migrants who have been in Britain for less than 10 years.

I think there're a number of ways to help with the housing shortage, that aren't just -
Build more houses, though with a growing population that is also a big requirement. Some other things can be done and locally driven others need to be national.

Empty properties: If a property owner in an area where there is a housing shortage is not living in the property, renting it, or actively in the process of trying to rent it, or renovate it, there should be higher council taxes and property taxes. The charges need to be high enough to stop people simply buying and holding empty property.

Rental regulations: landlords should be licensed and properties checked.

Concentrated centres of employment: There are huge numbers of jobs that these days can be done from home. It makes no sense to have lots of people living in a city like London and it's suburbs in order to commute into an office to do work that can be done from a home anywhere in the UK. We have small towns and villages around the country that are dying because in order to work we all have to move to big cities. The national government could create incentives for businesses to move out of London and or stop requiring their employees to show up at a central office. Fast internet access the country and better transport so when you do have to go in it doesn't take all day, would mean people can move further away from the cities.

Don't just build houses: the town I grew up in is in the London commute belt and has doubled in size on the last ten years. There have been no new roads, schools or hospitals. There are also no more trains running into London than there were previously, the result is that if people can afford it they move closer into London to make the godawful commute shorter.

The problem exists because we have built an economy on a property bubble. This has been taken advantage of by the baby boomer generation to the point that millennials have half the net worth at the same age. https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/jun/21/why-wealth-is-the-en…

Due to this the idea of property prices returning to their actual value is so abhorrent to a certain generation we have invented ways to keep prices artificially high. These include, Help to Buy, Part Buy / Part Rent, and the removal of Stamp Duty for properties under £300,000. These are all policies that do not actually help first time buyers, but instead keep the market at an inflated rate.

Prices in markets may go up as well as down was the old adage, we no longer have a market but a developer lead racquet.

Why cant we use 'kit houses'. There are lots of good quality ones which can be quickly constructed. These can be laid down anywhere without much trouble, all that would be needed would be access to amenities ie water, electricity, sewerage, gas

For-profit developers are the problem - they waste precious space on flats for people who can afford higher priced homes (of which there is less need) and also on people who don't even live in those homes or who don't even live in London. It is not in their interest to help people on modest salaries who need homes and communities.

Why can't we make it so that only non-profit housing associations are allowed to build in London over the next few years - building much needed cheap and innovative housing solutions. We could call upon the world class architects and urbanists that work in London and want to fix this crisis through design.

If you put the challenge out there the people with expertise will start proposing more of the kinds of solutions we need.

Affordability of housing and affordable housing are two entirely different topics. Affordability of housing is caused by supply and demand. Since the between the wars building era we have failed to build the homes that an expanding nation requires. In the 1930's we would not think twice about building on green fields or farms if there were buyers wanting their own homes. For social rented homes councils built cheaply on local authority land or used compulsory purchase to do so, these were created for people unable to afford to buy their own homes.

After WWII it took until the baby boom to start needing significant numbers of homes again. This lead to the creation of tower blocks as being the answer which created a quick fix solution for homelessness. They were never the best places to live but at least they were somewhere to call home. Over the following 30 to 40 years building homes was met with much opposition from those that had already established themselves in London and the suburbs and did not want more people to join them. Step up the guardians of the green belt and CPRE who would have you believe that there is not a single scrap of land to left build any more homes. Constant lobbying and not in my back yard (nimby) attitudes meant that the development of new homes was something of distain and that house builders were some how parasitic creatures threatening to destroy communities. In the 1930's a house builder would stand proud of his achievements but sadly not today.

Greedy property developers are making new housing expensive and unaffordable for normal Londoners on average salaries. Why can't we make it illegal for for-profit developers to operate in London at least when it comes down to residential builds?
Why can't we grow a culture that favours housing associations that put normal people's housing needs first?
People will argue that this will make the city look boring but these property developers make the city look boring anyway and hike up the prices to line their own pockets.
Why do we need to rely on these greedy companies when it is possible to construct buildings where everyone involved gets fair pay and normal Londoners can buy them - the entire industry needs harsh regulation - there is no shortage in London of construction workers, architects and engineers. We don't need the middle men.