More and more people are turning to their council in the hope of finding a home in these difficult times for homebuyers. The price of a home, although the rise is reported to be slowing down, has gone way beyond what a lot people can afford, and as a result town halls are being inundated with applications for social housing.
The applicants include people from middle-income professions who simply can’t afford to buy in London, and the numbers reached 340,000 in London this year. Redbridge, Barnet and Barking & Dagenham are three London boroughs where applications have rocketed by 500% since 1996. Other councils have seen applications double in the same period: Kensington & Chelsea, Sutton, Westminster, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdona dn Tower Hamlets among them.
The property boom has left many people left with little choice but to look for social housing through housing associations or local authorities.
Conservative housing minister grant Shapps blamed rises in stamp duty and council tax as well as property prices, and said that home ownership was falling for the first time ever. The Government’s housing agency, the National House and Planning Advice Unit, admitted that young middle-class people would have to rely on state housing in the future.
Housing Minister Yvette Cooper is about to publish a housing green paper which will launch the biggest home building programme since the Seventies – bumping up the rate from 200,000 to 240,000 a year. Gordon Brown has made affordable housing a top priority for the Government.
The supply of social housing has been increased by 50%, but needs to go further, and the DCLG claim to have spent £20bn on social housing already. The house building rate fee from 184,906 to 173,369 in the year to April – well below the annual figure of 223,000 needed to house people.
London Councils estimate that £1.3bn per year will be needed for 15,000 new affordable homes, with 70% for social housing. This is half as much again as is allocated currently.
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