Building Strong Communities

There are many parts of the country with empty affordable housing.

I am not so sure about creating self-contained communities like this when it is the wider local community that needs the game nights, the reading clubs, etc (where did all the chess cafes go?). It seems too exclusive, too divisive. Developments should provide such meeting places for the whole neighbourhood, not just the residents of the buildings themselves. And what of the affordable housing residents of these developments, the social housing residents - would they be excluding from such facilities? I think there is a case for provision of one or two facilities in the building - and why not a greenhouse floor for communal use?

Housing.
Genuinely affordable housing for London's low income residents, workers or not, is desperately needed. This of course requires radical changes in government policy, but help from the Mayor & GLA is desperately needed and should be an urgent priority. Current shared ownership and other schemes are not really designed to help young and other first time buyers. They are more expensive than non-shared buying, service fees are too high, the properties are appalling with kitchens in living rooms (ban this). They benefit the development industry more. Self-build is a damp squib, with LAs having little motivation to make it workable for ordinary people rather than upmarket bespoke architects & developers. We need release of much more land for real self-build projects, LAs must stop charging high annual fees to be on pointless self-build land lists. Above all, a second housing market, built at cost, for the ordinary Londoners to build or buy homes, not investments.
GLA/Mayor key working housing funded ended, and key workers had to leave their GLA-subsidised HA housing as the rents went up beyond their means. Temporary measures like this are false help if they do not last until permanent solutions are in place and functioning. GLA/Mayor should be insisting that offices are converted to good quality housing, much of it genuinely affordable. Look at the Marks & Spencer flagship store Oxford Street proposed redevelopment - less retail and the rest will only be offices. We lose not only the beautiful 1930s building facade, but the opportunity to provide housing, and to keep the pollution at lower, liveable, levels. Projects like this should have to provide housing ON SITE, not money for housing outside London.