Ten years ago, I asked a housing commission of experts to identify and make proposals to address the key issues for housing in London. The two main problems they identified – lack of supply and unaffordable house prices and rents – remain the most serious housing problems facing Londoners today.
These problems have been made much worse by three catastrophic developments: one, Boris Johnson’s cuts in targets for affordable housing delivery and record of inaction on meeting Londoners’ housing needs; two, the new Government’s huge cuts in Labour’s plans for housing investment, which could be as high as £800 million and have led to a complete moratorium on new projects; and three, the new government’s calculated assault on people in private rented homes, through their proposed housing benefit cap, which will hit lower income Londoners, affecting nearly all housing benefit supported tenants in inner London and many of those in more traditionally suburban areas, too.
Up to a quarter of a million private tenants receiving housing benefit in London, and many of the half a million London households claiming housing benefit in social housing, will suffer under George Osborne’s Budget.
This will cause misery and social cleansing on a massive scale. Many people will be forced into poverty or out of their homes to other parts of London. The capital city should not become further divided, walled off between rich and poor. We need mixed communities so that we avoid the ghettoes that scar many other cities around the world.
Yet only last week, one Westminster Conservative councillor was quoted as saying that “large families have to be realistic about living in the heart of the capital and may
need to be housed outside of the borough”. That means large poorer families. The rich can stay.
Despite London having some of the highest levels of unemployment in the country –at 9 per cent compared with 7.9 per cent for the whole economy – Osborne wants to remove ten per cent of housing benefit for those on Jobseeker’s Allowance for a year.
There is no way around this problem other than to build affordable homes and to restore economic growth. All this means we have come full circle in London. Despite massive progress in the period 2000-2008, we still need to provide more, good quality and secure homes as a top priority during the next mayoral period. Housing starts are falling, will be down this year and are likely to collapse in 2011.
If there is an issue I want to try to put right after four years of Tory misrule, should I be selected as Labour’s candidate, then it is housing. The lack of supply of affordable homes is a blight on London life. In truth, Labour woke up to this issue too late in the course of the life of the past 13 years – and often found itself on the wrong side, such as by not allowing local authorities to build the homes they needed locally.
More than 350,000 households, almost 10 per cent of the total in London, are on a local authority waiting list. At the same time as housing waiting lists have grown, lettings to social housing in London have fallen. London needs around 4,400 additional units of supported housing.
Adjusting for the mix of properties in each region, the average house price in London in June 2009 was £297,000. That’s the highest average value of any region in England and more than twice the average price in the lowest cost region, the north-east.
Labour in London must lead the campaign to reverse the housing and housing benefit cuts in London and to build support for a radical housing manifesto for the next mayoral term from 2012 onwards. We must give a voice to private tenants, social tenants and aspirant home owners whose prospects of getting a decent home have been hit over the past two years by Johnson’s indifference to their needs and now by the coalition Government’s cuts.
With the right powers, plans and resources, I believe London can build enough new homes to start to close the gap between housing supply and rising housing need and demand. The Mayor, working with councillors, can help London’s boroughs build more houses; housing associations could use their financial strength to do more; and developers will respond to a mayor who genuinely wants to help them to build responsibly rather than stopping them from building.
In particular, I will support calls for more local responsibility and for councils to have the right to borrow against their assets and to build. I will work in partnership with the boroughs to leverage the value of London government and local authority assets to this end.
Boris Johnson has allowed the momentum to dissipate. We will have to start again in 2012.
