Letter: The ‘Housing Crisis’ Is A Creation of Government Policy

Published on: 8 Apr, 2016
Updated on: 8 Apr, 2016

From Ben Paton

The so-called housing crisis is a creation of government policy.

1. The real housing need is for council houses – which government has not been building for a generation.

2. The shortage of council housing has been made worse by consistently selling off the stock of council houses at below vacant possession open market values.

3. It is not efficient to ask developers to build 100 houses in order to achieve a maximum of just 40 ‘affordable’ homes. Nor is it efficient for government to subsidise up to 20% of the cost of the ‘affordable’ homes. A so-called ‘affordable’ home is not equivalent to or a substitute for council housing.

The government should just build council houses instead. The other 60 houses get sold – and a good proportion of those are purchased by non residents (as this BBC documentary explains: https://youtu.be/wgvjqB_Yt2A).

4. Surrey is already one of the most densely populated parts of England and Europe. Its infrastructure is already struggling to cope. There are more appropriate parts of the UK and the rest of the EU to build new towns.

Responses to Letter: The ‘Housing Crisis’ Is A Creation of Government Policy

Jim Allen Reply

April 8, 2016 at 11:48 pm

Perhaps taking the new jobs to where the people are born, keeping the wider families together and increasing community spirit would be a better idea.

I get emails from Canada in less than 30 seconds, so why move someone from Sheffield to Surrey to fill a “paper shuffling” job here when all the facilities they need for family life and work space are already in Sheffield?

Simply bringing more people from all locations into the South East fails on all aspects of community and infrastructure provision.