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Building a better society with decent homes for all | Letters


John Harris is absolutely right to highlight housing problems as central to debates about politics and society and to stress the need for more and better public housing as a crucial part of everyone having a decent place to live (The anxieties dividing the nation begin with housing, 28 October).

But the housing shortage that forces people to remain in unsuitable or substandard housing, or drives them into homelessness, is just one side of the coin; the other is the expectation that buying property is a one-way, sure-fire bet that delivers exceptional return on investment. Clearly this only happens because the housing market is rigged by various ways of limiting supply and because of the tax incentives given to homeowners and landlords.

Attitudes are unlikely to change until politicians of all persuasions are prepared to be open and honest with the public that they cannot have the cake of windfall gains for property owners as well as the eating of it in an adequate supply of affordable housing. Real political leadership would include helping people to understand that their individual gains from the status quo are more than offset by the consequences for their children and their communities.

While Labour’s plans for housing are ambitious and creative, they don’t seem to be challenging the current mindset, although it’s hard to find a better practical illustration of how and why the economy should work for the many rather than the few.
Ian Bretman
London

John Harris says “if we built the houses we needed, the sense of a population often terrified of the future would recede”. In doing so, he falls for the development lobby’s continuing disinformation.

We already have the houses we need. There is a surplus of more than a million houses over households in England, according to the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence. The problem – lack of affordability – is caused by low interest rates, snowballing inherited property wealth and the outrageous help-to-buy programme, which has pushed prices well beyond mortgageable reach of the unendowed. Building more wouldn’t change that if, as academic studies suggest, 300,000 new homes annually in England over the next 20 years would only lower prices by about 10%. More crucially, developers won’t increase supply to the point where they have to drop prices; they simply lobby for more planning consents to get more bankable assets.

The real need is for more efficient use of the existing stock, which could be brought about by a retargeting of council tax to favour the main homes of UK taxpayers, with higher rates for all others, and penal and escalating rates for property left empty. That would soften prices, but it cannot be stated often enough that the issue is homes, not investments.
John Worrall
Cromer, Norfolk

Time and time again, research by the Campaign to Protect Rural England has found that those most in need of affordable housing are overlooked by a profit-driven housing market. Our recent report Space to Breathe found that only 10% of homes built on greenfield land released from the green belt over the last 10 years were for “affordable” homes, despite this being cited as an argument to release this valuable asset.

Last year, Oliver Letwin led a review to tackle barriers to building which called for a reformed planning system led by local communities. Ultimately we need homes to be commissioned by local communities, not built speculatively by developers, who will always put profit ahead of people’s needs. That’s why CPRE supports the National Housing Federation’s call for the government to invest in building 145,000 new social homes every year, with an appropriate portion for rural areas.
Tom Fyans
Deputy chief executive, CPRE

John Harris makes some excellent points about the importance of housing and community, highlighting the lack of properly affordable, well-designed homes. But why is it that rising house prices are always framed as a good news story across the press?
Susan Major
York

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