Category: Housing

The bedroom tax and the Liberal Democrats

It was an uncomfortable experience reading today’s Work and Pensions Committee report on what we are now calling the “social sector size criteria” – aka the bedroom tax – and other components of housing support affected by welfare reform. It was uncomfortable because the cross-party Committee highlights the […]

Housing policy as if people mattered

We’re doing the housing policy debate all wrong. That, at least, is the argument Danny Dorling advances in his recent book All that is solid: The great housing disaster. At the heart of the book is the claim that the focus on increasing the supply of new homes […]

Beyond the council tax

The council tax is unlovely and unloved. It was rushed into being as a replacement for the hated poll tax. Its structure has always been an uncomfortable compromise, somewhere between a charge for services and a genuinely progressive property tax. The property values upon which it is based […]

Doing something about housing

What to do about the housing crisis? It’s a question that, should you have been so inclined, you could have focused on throughout much of yesterday’s proceedings at Liberal Democrat Spring Conference. A motion on the reform of planning policy was passed, unamended, during the morning’s official business. […]

We want to break free

What could housing associations do? What should housing associations do? How should individual associations respond to the risks and opportunities presented by an increasingly demanding environment? What sort of future is shaping up for the sector? These are questions that many housing association boards and senior management teams are […]

Pragmatism and principle on housing and support

What is the Coalition’s biggest policy-making failure? I suspect a short poll would generate a long list of contenders. Quite high on the list must be irrational short-termism. Cut the Environment Agency’s budget significantly in an attempt to save money. End up paying out much more money to […]

Bubble-talk

Warning about an impending housing bubble or denying that any signs of a bubble can be detected are popular media pastimes in the UK. Bubbles are bad. Bubbles shut people out of the housing market because property is unaffordable. Bubbles store up trouble for those who buy at […]

Vince on “social housing”

Vince Cable made a substantial speech to the Royal Economic Society at the beginning of this week. The speech is worth reading in full because it represents one of the most thorough, thoughtful and wide-ranging perspectives on the economy that you are likely to hear from a front […]

Shifting ground on housing?

Something interesting is happening in the world of housing policy. At least it feels that way in my more optimistic moments. Since the Coalition government produced its housing strategy in late 2011 there has been a lot of talk about the need to deal with the housing problem, […]

A voyage of rediscovery

Today’s papers bring us further news of the sickness that afflicts our housing market. On the front page of the Telegraph is a piece focusing on St Vince of Cable’s warning that the housing market is exhibiting all the signs of overheating and that Mark Carney is considering […]