Although details don't seem to be up yet.Housing Conference
involving campaigners from all over London to be held in September to deal with issues of empty homes, squatters' rights, building new council homes and rent controls. More details on our website
The leaflet also reported Lewisham PBP's success in getting Lewisham Council to abandon plans to auction off 6 or 7 houses of which 5 have been occupied by People Before Profit since February.
I think selling off Council Houses is a bad idea, although for somewhat different reasons than LPBP, and if it is needed to find money to build new homes, I can see why the Council would. But, as argued here, my preferred solution would be
Somehow I don't suppose such arguments will convince LPBP, but at least we agree that housing is an important issue - so I 'm looking forward to their conference, and hope to hear more details in due course, and report on it here.to make it easier for the private sector to build more houses. .... The reason for saying the private sector is principally because that is where the money for the necessary investment could come from.
The problem for Lewisham Council is that, like every other Council, they would be up against vociferous opposition in allowing this, e.g. from most of us here on this Forum - even though the impact on their finances via increased Council Tax receipts and Community Infrastructure Levy would be wholly positive. As a Labour Council, they would also feel very uncomfortable to see more housing being built for the rich than for the poor, and as well as allowing evil private sector developers to enrich themselves. ... more housing for people with higher incomes means where these people live currently is freed up for those on lower incomes, so also relieving the pressure on them.