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Publication type: General
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In March 2014, an NHS nurse earning around £26,500 a year wrote to me about her experiences with First Steps, the Mayor’s affordable home ownership scheme.
These homes are sold under a shared ownership deal, where you buy a share of a home and pay rent on the difference. It is the Mayor’s big answer for people on a range of modest incomes who are completely priced out of the market and who aren’t a priority for social housing.
But my constituent found many of the homes were out of her price range, and the marketing was often misleading. Worse, once they're built their prices will rise with the rest of the market.
It isn’t just nurses who are being let down. New recruits to the fire and police services start on similar salaries, and far from helping them, the Metropolitan Police Service is busily selling off homes they own to the highest bidder to raise cash.
In this report, I set out these problems and suggest that the Mayor explores other models of home ownershop that will remain affordable for key workers in London
Download the report - Can a nurse get on Boris' property ladder?
Following this report, I chaired a Housing Committee investigation into the affordability of shared ownership. You can read the report we published, First Steps on the Ladder?