The National Housing Federation has predicted that forthcoming housing cuts will lead to the loss (or lack of creation) of 200,000 jobs, and to 350,000 people being added to housing waiting lists. If the housing budget is cut by a third, it predicts that 142,000 new affordable homes will not be built.
And that’s just one sector.
The slaughter that George Osborne will un leash on the UK economy today will have repercussions far bigger than that. And every one will be a personal tragedy.
Hat tip to TUC Cuts Watch.
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“142,000 new affordable homes will not be built”
Good. The last thing a green, environmentally sustainable future needs is a lot of cheap new buildings. We need to start preparing for a low growth economy: an economy based upon a stable population living within its economic and environmental means. We need to make better use of teh empty housing that already exists before building lots of new homes using, invariably, imported labour.
Do up new homes and improve their insulation by all means and use government money to make it happen.
Homes would be more affordable if the land element was not capitalised. Collect all land rent and decent, green, homes could be built for the cost of labour and building materials alone.
Homes would be more affordable if people were actually allowed to build them, the prices of homes are so high as nimby lobby makes it impossible for anyone except large corporate construction companies to be able to navigate the red tape, bribe the right officials and have the land sit empty for 5 years while all the red tape is dealt with.
Here is an idea, rather than pay a farmer 500 euros to produce 2 tonnes of grain worth 150 usd a tonne on an acre of land using 2 barrels equivalent of fossil fuel in pesticide and nitrogen fertilizer just let people buy an acre of agricultural land for the 5000 quid its worth ( which is only the present value of the subsidies ) and build at their own cost a house with a ground source heat pump and high standard insulation which will save the country importing 10 barrels of fossil fuel a year , and as an addition on 1/10th of the acre a veggie patch can produce more food using compost waste and no fertilizer than the grain farmer did at huge cost to the country ……
@Catsick
I have some sympathy for the nimby lobby. We cannot continue to crowd into a small corner of the country. There has to be some planning to spread settlements out. 0.3% own 69% of the land. We need to free up some of this good land, which you and I have never had access to. Property developers are also sitting on huge land banks, most of which already have planning consent. They have no incentive to build now with falling house prices. If landowners had to pay the full land rent for exclusive use to the community which created the value, they would soon think twice about keeping it out of use. Land (like capital goods) should be owned by those who use it.