20.08.12
Sell off expensive social housing to fund more – think tank
Social housing in expensive parts of the country should be sold off to fund much more affordable housing in cheaper areas, the Conservative-aligned think tank Policy Exchange has urged in a new report.
Selling the highest-value properties once they are vacant could generate up to £4.5bn, which could then be used to build up to 170,000 new homes a year, Policy Exchange suggests, with nobody being forced to move.
Housing minister Grant Shapps has described the recommendation as “blindingly obvious”.
He said: “I’ve been determined that we get Britain building and help the thousands of families who for years have been left languishing on social housing waiting lists.”
Properties worth more than the average house price for an area account for one in five of the social housing portfolio, and these 816,000 homes have a total value of £159bn.
About 3.5% of these expensive homes become vacant each year and could raise £4.5bn, once debts are paid off. If used to provide more social housing, this would reduce the housing waiting list by 600,000 in five years.
Alex Morton, the report’s author, said: “Expensive social housing is costly, unpopular and unfair. That is why almost everybody rejects it. Social housing tenants deserve a roof over their heads – but not one better than most people can afford, particularly as expensive social housing means less social housing and so longer waiting lists for most people in need.”
The initiative would also create thousands of jobs in the construction sector and raise standards of living for tenants, the think tank said.
The National Housing Federation, which represents housing associations, said the proposals were “fundamentally flawed”, and could lead to the ejection of poorer people from areas that have become expensive, even if their families had lived there for generations.
Its chief executive David Orr told the Telegraph: “It could effectively cleanse many towns of hard-working people who simply can’t afford the high prices of buying or renting privately.”
View the report at: www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/ending%20expensive%20social%20tenancies.pdf
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