Affordable housing investment to lead the way out of the crisis?
The UK Housing Review’s annual assessment of government support for housing investment and what proportion goes towards affordable housing showed a significant shift this year. In Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland most support (between 74 and 100 per cent) goes towards affordable housing, whereas in England most has gone to private housing. In 2020, three-quarters […]
UK social housing performance over the last 30 years
An article to celebrate 30 years of the magazine Social Housing. Social Housing magazine was a child of its time. Created in 1988 just as housing associations’ access to private finance was formalised, it was there both to report on what was happening and to provide guidance to everyone involved. It was a time of […]
How do we build 100,000 social rented homes each year?
Crisis and the National Housing Federation have just published a new report showing that 100,000 social homes are needed across Great Britain. With all but 10,000 of those needed in England, the biggest challenge will be to the Westminster government and will require a step-change in how it delivers housing. The high numbers reflect the […]
Encouraging messages, now Labour must work on the detail
Jeremy Corbyn launched Labour’s affordable housing green paper last Thursday, promising one million new homes over ten years of which a significant number would be for social rent. The ambition was clear: funding will be restored to the level when Labour last held office, and councils will once again become “major deliverers” of social housing. […]
Government policy needs to return to building homes to let at modest rents
As the latest UK Housing Review is published, co-author John Perry describes how government priorities have shifted from direct investment in affordable housing to personal subsidy through housing benefit. If asked about how the government spends money on housing, most people would probably say they build council houses – but of course they’d be wrong. […]
Another housing privatisation disaster
When the Ministry of Defence sold its armed forces housing in 1996, it already looked a bad deal: 57,000 houses were sold for £30,000 each, well under half the average house price at the time. Overnight, the sale created Britain’s biggest private landlord and gave it a blue chip tenant – the MoD. Yet the […]
The election result may have more to do with housing than we think
Housing is often ‘the dog that doesn’t bark’ in elections but last week could it have been nipping away in the background? One of the most striking pieces of analysis of how Britain voted came from the Financial Times, which showed how pro-Conservative or pro-Labour voters were divided by age group. Those in their middle […]
Focusing on the ‘JAMs’
Few of the Government’s current investment initiatives address the housing affordability issues faced by the ‘just about managing’, but there are measures that could be taken without extra spending. Rather unusually, and surely for the first time in several years, a government housing policy statement has been welcomed by the industry and by most lobbyists. […]
Northern Ireland’s distinct housing market
CIH has just published a brand new edition of the book Housing in Northern Ireland, edited by Peter Shanks and David Mullins. Here CIH policy adviser John Perry, one of the authors, gives a flavour of what the new book offers. Less than ten years ago there was a house-building boom in Northern Ireland. Completions […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on