Category: Housing

Making the case for the right to housing

There’s plenty happening in the housing world at the moment, and I’m not just talking about last week’s parallel Manchester gatherings at the CIH annual conference and the HACT House Party. We’ve seen IPPR launch a fuller version of its proposals for shifting housing subsidy away from housing […]

Home, security and locatedness

There seems to be an awful lot of housing news and comment circulating just at the moment. And it isn’t just more of the same. The arguments for a change of gear on housing policy seem to be growing louder and more frequent. The housing sector, it’s argued, […]

Housing pathology and paralysis

A few weeks ago Janan Ganesh in the FT described the UK housing market as an ‘institutionalised pathology’. The problems that the housing market is causing for the British economic and political system seemingly become ever more apparent by the day. There is an increasingly strong coalition of […]

Shaping housing policy post-2015

It’s clear we’re already entering what is going to be a very long election campaign in the run up to May 2015. In the housing policy field we’re seeing plenty of organisations pitching ideas at the moment, with the aim of influencing the content of the manifestos for […]

Ed’s brave housing proposal

Rent regulation and three year tenancies. That’s Ed’s big housing idea for the private rented sector. It is what the people wanted. Well, quite a lot of people appear to support the idea. But even before the formal announcement has been made it is apparent that some are […]

Dissent in the ranks

You’d expect lefties to kick up a fuss about the Coalition’s austerity-justified policies. An agenda that is having serious negative impacts upon the most vulnerable, while at the same time transferring wealth to the already wealthy, will have a tendency to annoy those who prioritize solidarity, dignity and […]

Valuing housing

On Wednesday this year’s Housing Studies Association conference featured a panel discussion on the theme “Who is best placed to judge the value of housing – the state or the consumer?”. The panel members were Vidhya Alakeson of the Resolution Foundation; John Moss, a Councillor at LB Waltham […]

Welfare reform: the evidence mounts

There is little doubt that IDS’s pet project – welfare reform – is having a significant impact on the lives of some of the most disadvantaged members of our society. And for every case where we might conclude that impact is positive, it would appear there is a […]