Affordable Housing — House of Lords, 2015-06-25
Topic: Housing
Monroe Edward Palmer (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, first I must declare my interest as the chairman of the advisory board of the Property Redress Scheme. It is clear that there is a shortage of housing—that has come through in the words of every other Peer who has spoken. The Government’s response is to make mortgages easier to obtain and to propose the sale of housing associations properties to their occupiers. Let it be said clearly that neither of those profound announcements increases housing supply by even one unit On mortgages, 20% of first-time buyers will be paying off their mortgage beyond the age of 65, which is a big increase from a few years ago. With all the Government’s boasts about housing, the Office for National Statistics says that home ownership fell for the first time in a century in 2011, while renting and overcrowding increased. The policy of right to buy, particularly of housing association properties, has been mentioned by other noble Lords. But to extend it to 1.3 million housing association homes with discounts, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, of up to £104,000 costs at least £5 billion—and not one unit more is made available Will the Minister say in detail how the sale of housing association homes for 30% less than their value can conceivably be enough to build a new home? Just selling off a few expensive homes—which again reduces the housing stock—cannot be an answer. Although I thank the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for introducing this debate, I take issue with him on one point. He said that he had always supported the right to buy. I have always been against the right to buy, not because it gives a bonus to those who live there but because it reduces the housing stock available to the poorer people in society. That is what was and still is wrong with the sale of council stock and is even more wrong—in spades—with the sale of housing association properties In housing, one of the buzzwords is "regeneration". That often means demolition of large tranches of council-owned housing that is replaced with a mixture of private homes and so-called "social housing", often at high density. A point was mentioned in passing by another noble Lord about properties such as these that are compulsorily acquired for leaseholders and some freeholders. What happens on estates that I know is that when there is regeneration and people are forced to move, they are not given enough in the sale of their properties to buy a property on the same estate and therefore have to take out additional mortgages or move further away. I trust that the Government will look at some way in which people who are forced to move because of regeneration can at least have a property in the same development without having to borrow more Another buzzword used in the title of this debate is "affordable" housing, but "affordable" means different things to different people. To me, it has always meant social rented housing, which is the obvious way of providing affordable housing. There is also intermediate housing, affordable housing ownership and all the various different schemes where you buy a small part of the property, sometimes at a discount, with a covenant that you have to sell it at 80% of its value. But this is fiddling at the edges of affordable housing for those who really need it. This Government have a paranoia about private home ownership, which is often the nail in the coffin of affordable housing I now move beyond affordable housing to introduce another element into this debate that has not been mentioned so far. How do we extend this figure of 200,000 or 300,000 properties without relying on brownfield sites or the other methods that I and other noble Lords have mentioned? Perhaps the development of garden cities is the way forward to tackle the deficit in the housing stock. Communities need to provide proposals. I hope that the Minister can say what has happened to the proposal of the Liberal Democrats when in coalition to invite bids for £1 billion of investment that was announced in the Autumn Statement 2013 to unlock local housing schemes for, at that stage, more than 1,500 homes. The funding was intended to unlock up to 250,000 new homes between 2015 and 2020 in locally led garden cities. If people locally want the schemes, money should be available. They could be a great boon to the localities of various parts of the country and would provide additional housing in larger amounts than by tinkering with odd bits of brownfield site and increasing housing density, which impinges on the way of life of those who live within them.