Voting for housing

[Tim Lund]

When I vote May 22nd, it will be for Steve Bullock, because his manifesto leads with housing, and is the only one which, IMHO, includes credible policies on it. And no, I have not been paid to write this.

It's still reasonable to ask 'why bother?' since no one in their right minds has any doubt that he will be elected, and also to point out that his 12 years of being Mayor hasn't ever been properly tested, but that's more a failure of our local opposition parties. As to 'why bother', I hope it doesn't sound too lame to say, because democracy matters, and even when we know it's not going to make a difference, voting is a good habit to get into - a bit like brushing your teeth. It's also a way of sending a message, so I'm hoping that strategists across London, from all parties, will be register that Steve Bullock's housing policies win votes - and not just mine.

Anyway, here's a link to his manifesto, from which I take various quotes

Here's the first bullet point from his foreword:

The London housing crisis is seen most clearly in the rising tide of homelessness. But it is also affecting thousands of others both young and old. We have reached a situation where even those on middle incomes struggle to find places they can afford to buy or rent.

I like the mention of "even those on middle incomes", which is obviously in line with the national Labour Party line of a cost of living crisis affecting the majority of citizens, but it is right, and in London, this incredibly wealthy world city, the excessive price of housing is the main reason why. What to do about it must, in one way or another involve building more homes, hopefully well planned, with attention to the long run. Labour Party instincts are to focus on building 'affordable' homes, although this technical distinction, which relates to whether provided by registered social landlords, is something I don't worry about so much. But let's not go into this for now.

Looking at what he promises on housing for the next four years

Deliver a minimum of 2,000 new affordable homes, building 500 council homes directly,

which makes my point about focusing on affordable housing, when it is increasing the total housing supply which matters more to 'those on middle incomes'. And, very sensibly, this is what the Local Development Framework - page 36 targets in the first place

Core Strategy Objective 2:

Housing provision and distribution

5.4 Provision will be made for the completion of an additional 18,165 net new dwellings from all sources between 2009/10 and 2025/26 to meet local housing need and accommodate the borough’s share of London’s housing needs. This aims to exceed the London Plan target for the borough

I'm struggling a bit to find explicit statements about what the breakdown between 'affordable' and other provision is or is meant to be, but I think it's meant to be 50/50, on which basis, Steve Bullock promising just 2,000 more affordable homes - I assume over the next four years of his Mayoralty - isn't that big a deal, especially since when broken down in Table 9.2 on page 165, this included 9,000 in 2014/2020.

But I guess this is politics, and it's the mood music which counts. Steve Bullock is saying we need more housing, and not just social housing, and he is right. That gets my vote.

And if anyone has missed me on this Forum, not getting involved in controversy during Lent, then you could have followed me on Twitter, @TimLundSE26, with which I posted links to these two blogs, the first which comments on the Dianne Abbott meeting organised by the Sydenham Labour Party

How to Evade the Housing Crisis: A Guide for 2016 London Mayoral Candidates

while the other is a bit more theoretical, about why younger generations really are being short changed by those of us the right side of 50.

Intra- vs Inter-generational Justice: an ongoing debate

(but I'm up to Admin's anti-spam policy of no more than three links per post, so you'll just have to find it on the http://www.if.org.uk site )

You young 'uns, you really should do something about it. Like vote, and let politicians understand what policies you need. And in London, that means more homes.

[Eagle]

Great to have you back Tim. One may not always agree with you , however your posts are always well thought out.

In the context of 2014 what in the case of Sydenham is affordable housing. Would be interested to know?

[Manwithaview1]

Voting for the Conservatives in Lewisham is a wasted vote.

[Tim Lund]

Voting for the Conservatives in Lewisham is a wasted vote.

No more, if you like their policies, than me choosing to vote Labour in 2014. If you are an existing social housing tenant, who thinks the only policy needed on housing is to bring existing social housing stock up to the decent homes standards, then voting for Simon Nundy could be how you send out that message. It was the main focus during the years of New Labour, after all.

[Eagle]

Any vote is a waste of time in Lewisham as Politburo decides.

However despite this one should exercise ones franchise.

[Manwithaview1]

Voting for the Conservatives in Lewisham is a wasted vote.

No more, if you like their policies, than me choosing to vote Labour in 2014. If you are an existing social housing tenant, who thinks the only policy needed on housing is to bring existing social housing stock up to the decent homes standards, then voting for Simon Nundy could be how you send out that message. It was the main focus during the years of New Labour, after all.

Social housing residents deserve far more than Decent Homes.

[Manwithaview1]

Any vote is a waste of time in Lewisham as Politburo decides.

However despite this one should exercise ones franchise.

Elected councillors deciding things they laid out in their manifesto is bad?

Still no sign of our Conservative candidate,

Labour and the Lib Dems have been around 3 times each this year.

[Eagle]

Rod
Admirable post. We do need to rebalance Britain. Wonder why you have not mentioned any conurbations outside England.

If we are going to move the capitol I think further than Reading.

York has often been mentioned.

Moving the financial centre north would see the collapse of the housing sector, This may be a good thing in the end .

This has been raised a few times before , very noble but may have unforeseen consequences ( if they were foreseen I would tell you what they were ).

[Tim Lund]

Great to have you back Tim. One may not always agree with you , however your posts are always well thought out.

In the context of 2014 what in the case of Sydenham is affordable housing. Would be interested to know?

So would many planners, who are 'bewildered', according to "Inside Housing"

Planners were left ‘bewildered’ by references to a new affordability test in planning guidance launched by the government last week.

The Communities and Local Government department announced its streamlined online resource contained ‘a new affordability test for determining how many homes should be built’ when it launched last Wednesday.

Planning minister Nick Boles described the policy as a ‘legal obligation’ for town halls to provide affordable homes.

The guidance said that local plans should take steps to increase supply if ‘market signals’ such as affordability suggested it was necessary.

I'm with Nick Boles here, who is up against, not only most of his Conservative Party colleagues, but a planning profession which feels its role is to counter market forces, rather than to guide them constructively. So, reading through pages and pages of stuff about planning, there's rarely anything about how markets work. It's as if they live in a Soviet style command and control economy, with production targets and five year plans. It can work, after a fashion, and at some point plans do need to be made, but market signals - e.g. young people and those starting families finding themselves priced out of living in London - are how you know that the plans need to be revised. There's language in documents such as Lewisham's Local Development Framework about the need for flexibility, and statements to say that Lewisham is being flexible, but this can only be checking boxes as long as planners as a profession are baffled by an entirely reasonable requirement to take account of market signals.

To answer your question, I refer back to something I wrote last year

There are two ways of defining what would constitute a planning authority not granting enough permissions: either if it fails to meet targets such as used to be set in the National Planning Policy Framework, or else if it allows the local ratio of housing cost to average income to exceed a certain level. In principle I'd prefer the second, but the first would be easier to administer, but actually, local housing targets could be set in the light of the local housing cost to income ratio.

That's the solution to the housing crisis in two short paragraphs, but it is idle to deny that there will be costs, principally the negative equity with which anyone who has bought property recently will be hit, and what will, from the point of view of a future economic historian, be a second hit of the 2008 banking crisis. There will also be a lot of load blathering from local amenity societies, expressions of pain from local councillors, distress from senior local planning officers who know their local areas so much better than anyone else ever could, etc., etc.

It's much the same point as I made in that blog I wrote for the Intergenerational Foundation

finding somewhere to live ... comes at the cost of paying half their salary to live here, when their parents would have paid more like a quarter.

You might argue that Lewisham on its own couldn't implement such a policy, but there's nothing stopping it moving in the right direction - e.g. planning for more housing than set in current London Plan targets. Of course more housing brings more requirements for other infrastructure, but this is what planning is for - working out how to build sustainably, for the long run.

Targets in terms of housing costs to income ratios would need to be set for London as a whole - but why not?

[Tim Lund]

You young 'uns, you really should do something about it. Like vote, and let politicians understand what policies you need. And in London, that means more homes.

Welcome back - there were prophesies of your return on Easter Day with a message for us all on housing and I agree with much of what you say.

On the subject of youth - I would like to know if there is anyone under 25 who regularly reads or contributes to this forum.

I know there was one once - 'Nicholas'. I'll see if I can raise him.

[Tim Lund]

Other alternatives to building more houses and increasing the size of this over-populated cities are recalibrating Britain so that Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle take more of the strain.

I have long thought of an alternative Britain in which the Birmingham Canal districts are turned into a financial sector; Leeds-Manchester becomes a northern hub with a fast rail link and a rival cultural sector to rival that of the south.

I even favour our seat of government and civil service being moved to Reading and the Queen making her permanent home in Windsor creating a 'government zone' just off the M4. (The magna carta corridor)

The National Sports stadium would be just outside Birmingham, making it accessible to all.

The City of London would become a new arts and cultural sector making use of some of the oldest buildings in the country.

Needless to say this would have an impact on housing and the price bubble.

Nice ideas, but the evidence is that it's not what most people want.

Evan Davis' two parter on BBC2 - Mind The Gap: London Vs The Rest - was very interesting on this. It's 'agglomeration' you're up against.

[Manwithaview1]

You young 'uns, you really should do something about it. Like vote, and let politicians understand what policies you need. And in London, that means more homes.

Welcome back - there were prophesies of your return on Easter Day with a message for us all on housing and I agree with much of what you say.

On the subject of youth - I would like to know if there is anyone under 25 who regularly reads or contributes to this forum.

I know there was one once - 'Nicholas'. I'll see if I can raise him.

My daughter reads this forum and will be voting for her first time next month. Oh to be 18 again...

[robbieduncan]

Does he define affordable? Does he state how he will fund the direct building of 500 council houses? In which boroughs?

[Tim Lund]

Does he define affordable? Does he state how he will fund the direct building of 500 council houses? In which boroughs?

In Steve Bullock's manifesto, 'affordable' will have its technical meaning, which is for letting via Registered Social Landlords (RSLs), i.e. Housing Associations or Councils, and can be at rents up to 80% of market rents. Given where market rents are, thanks to the overall shortage of supply and the demand to live in London, this is not exactly affordable for those on median incomes. It's why I prefer to use the word affordable without inverted commas, and to argue for planning targets based on a common sense understanding of what the word means - i.e. applying to housing in general, and something like requiring a similar fraction of take home pay as I would have had to pay when I was in my 20s. Unfortunately, most people who get involved in housing accept this language, and thinking about targets in terms of quantity rather than price, because that's the way they've been told planning works. And when you ask a simple question, such as whether they actually want affordable housing, they get very, very unhappy.

As to Steve Bullock and where the housing he is talking about has to go - yes, he means in Lewisham, unless I am very much mistaken. Funding is not a problem, except that it depends on central government giving permission to borrow. The economics of housing mean that the return on investment of building houses is incredibly high, even if you can only charge 80% of market rents.

[robbieduncan]

Where is the land to build 500 homes? Sounds like a totally impossible promise aimed directly at the traditional Labour voters, just like the massive benefit culture built by new Labour.

[Manwithaview1]

Where is the land to build 500 homes? Sounds like a totally impossible promise aimed directly at the traditional Labour voters, just like the massive benefit culture built by new Labour.

I'll give you 2 figures to match up with 2 years concerning those without a job for 2 years

177,000
40,000

1997 and 2010

Which go together?

[Eagle]

Could one get 500 houses in Mayow Park. A bit of a squeeze .

[Tim Lund]

Where is the land to build 500 homes? Sounds like a totally impossible promise aimed directly at the traditional Labour voters, just like the massive benefit culture built by new Labour.

Far from impossible. I don't particularly like high rise developments, just higher, but go up to Horniman Gardens, or Crystal Palace Parade and look north; there really is no effective limit to how much development is possible - with adequate planning for new infrastructure, schools etc. - other than reluctance to grant planning permission and the need to negotiate how it's to be done with existing residents and businesses. But it can happen - the evidence is before your very eyes if you chose to look.

For most of the projected new homes, the answer to your question 'where' can be found in the Lewisham Local Development Framework which I linked to previously.

6.4 The Lewisham Spatial Strategy focuses growth and larger scale development in the north of the borough on the localities of Lewisham, Catford, Deptford and New Cross/New Cross Gate. These are identified as Regeneration and Growth Areas. Benefiting from higher levels of public transport accessibility and land that is available and deliverable, this strategy area will accommodate substantial new jobs, homes and supporting facilities and infrastructure. It will become a focus of change and significant regeneration integrating and respecting important heritage assets.

As to the projected 500 new homes to be built by the Council, there's a consultation process going on at the moment to identify sites within existing estates - which will have the advantage of already being owned by the Council. If they had to pay for the land, the economics would not stack up.

I don't think this is a policy 'aimed directly at the traditional Labour voters', since those most affected by it will be people living on estates, where any new build will happen, and I can imagine traditional Labour voters among them not being happy about it. If you want a housing policy aimed directly at traditional voters - of any type - you make promises about improving the quality of existing social housing, and don't bother about upsetting these existing voters by building the housing future generations of voters will want. They probably don't vote anyway, either because they are too young, or because young people tend not to vote, or because the future generations to be housed haven't moved here yet. It's why, I'd suggest, New Labour focused on Decent Homes rather than freeing up Councils to build more homes, and it's why it's the only policy on housing that Simon Nundy has to offer. What, I wonder, happened to Conservative belief in markets?

Re 'the massive benefit culture built up by new Labour', I think you have a point, although it's not so much housing benefit, which is out of control, in the words of this contributor to Inside Housing, "but our whole housing system"

I don't actually agree that our whole housing is out of control, but that it's subject to controls which push up rents to ridiculous levels, which for many people they get paid by the tax payer in the form of housing benefits. From that same blog there is this table showing the scale of the problem:



The sort of planning for housing that I advocate - planning for enough houses to get rents down to a level which really is affordable - is by far the most humane, decent way to get this expenditure under control. It is to New Labour's shame that they allowed the problem to develop.

So, I'm tempted to think Steve Bullock is being just a little bit courageous in this policy, although it could be that he, and the Labour Party in general, have picked up from focus groups and polling data, that promising to build more homes is now understood to be what is needed, especially by the young, and how they win them as Labour voters.

[Eagle]

I know you mean well but even 500 housing units are a drop in the ocean , compared with the annual migration into
Lewisham from around the world and rest of the UK.

I do agree we do have terrible problem , bu NOT helped by subsidising landlords to charge high rents.

We must tackle this monsterous rent fiasco. It is a gravy train for by to let landlords.

Can not be done overnight but need to phase out all rent benefits. This will greatly reduce rents charged. Simples.

[Tim Lund]

I know you mean well but even 500 housing units are a drop in the ocean , compared with the annual migration into
Lewisham from around the world and rest of the UK.

I do agree we do have terrible problem , bu NOT helped by subsidising landlords to charge high rents.

We must tackle this monsterous rent fiasco. It is a gravy train for by to let landlords.

Can not be done overnight but need to phase out all rent benefits. This will greatly reduce rents charged. Simples.

Up to a point, Eagle, that point being the need to phase out rent benefits. We've been round this a few times already, but the problems with this approach are that reducing the return to investment in housing doesn't help get more houses built, and also it really hurts people on low incomes. It is so much more sensible to expand the housing supply, but you are quite right to say that 500 is a drop in the ocean. The key question is whether we can conceive of building enough houses to solve the problem. If, as a society, we commit to doing the necessary planning of the associated new infrastructure required, which new development in London certainly can finance, then there really is not a problem building many more homes.

Unfortunately, there are those who say it is impossible, even when the evidence of increasing densities in London is visible to anyone who looks up at the skyline in Central London, or on graphics such as this I posted a while back - Mapping London.



Among those who think we won't be able to build enough new homes in London are the enthusiasts for HS2. Writing recently in the London Review of Books, Christian Wolmar, would be Labour London Mayoral candidate in 2016 wrote

Jim Steer is HS2’s biggest fan. The former chief railway planner at the Strategic Rail Authority and founder of the transport consultancy Steer Davies Gleave, he believes the project is essential for Britain’s future welfare. ‘Do you know what the population of Britain will be in 2085?’ he asks, and then answers his own question: ‘85 million. Where will all those people go? London can only accommodate a couple of million or so. The rest will have to be elsewhere.

Anyone who has followed the HS2 saga is likely to have the feeling that it's set up to be another construction industry bonanza, with the economic case melting away, as Christian Wolmar relates in the rest of the article. Pointedly, the leading LSE urban economist, Henry Overman, disassociated himself from the evaluation process, although, unsurprisingly, the consultants at KPMG press on. So it becomes quite important to test assertions about there being limited room for housing expansion in London. Another big enthusiast for HS2 is Andrew Adonis, who is also widely thought to want to stand for Labour in London in 2016.

Andrew Adonis, in making his case for the scheme, emphasised the economic and environmental benefits, the speeding up of services and the need for extra capacity to reduce overcrowding. Much of this reasoning has since unravelled.

Unfortunately, Andrew Adonis, at 20/1 with Ladbrokes, is more likely to win than Christian Wolmar, offered at 100/1, but at shorter odds than either, 5/1, is Tessa Jowell who seems more interested in preserving the views of her Dulwich constituents than solving the housing crisis.

I kind of hope that Steve Bullock leading on the need to build more homes is evidence of the Labour Party moving on, although I do realise that this may just be wishful thinking. At the meeting organised by the Sydenham Labour Party with Dianne Abbott "to discuss how we solve the housing crisis", a leading figure within SydSoc stood up and, at considerable length, protested that you just couldn't fit all the people into London who wanted to live here. That's the sort of mind set you get into if you spend too much time with people who know all about housing as it has developed, rather than think about how it could be.