Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Housing Secretary John Healey have launched a Green Paper for consultation which proposes to build a million new affordable homes over 10 years, the majority for social rent. However, the paper also outlines that these reforms will set a new benchmark for the private rental sector to be compared to, resulting in falling rents.
Amongst the proposals set out in the consultation ‘Housing for the Many’ are:
- Redefining ‘affordable housing’ by scrapping the Conservatives’ so-called ‘Affordable Rent’ at up to 80% of market rents, and introducing a new definition linked to incomes including: social rent, living rent and low-cost ownership.
- A new ‘duty to deliver’ affordable housing for councils.
- A new English Sovereign Land Trust.• New borrowing freedoms and central funding to get councils and housing associations building at scale.
- A fully-fledged new Department for Housing.• A new independent national organisation and a Commissioner to represent the views of tenants.
- Fast-track reforms to allow tenants to take council and housing association landlords to court if their homes aren’t safe.
Read the full green paper here
We are launching this Green Paper at a time of crisis for our housing system. A million on housing waiting lists tens of thousands of children in temporary accommodation without a home to call their own; homelessness up by 50% since 2010; the indignity of sleeping on our streets at night or sofa surfing among friends; sky-high rents and house prices; luxury flats proliferating across our big cities; while social housing is starved of investment.
Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party Leader
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