Repeal the size criteria for housing benefit (commonly known as the "Bedroom Tax"), which punishes housing benefit claimants for having spare rooms when in many cases smaller properties are not available for them to move into.
The fundamental shortage of the supply of housing has pushed up the cost of living to unaffordable levels, which contributes to lifetimes of debt and requires the state to spend too much supporting people just to put a roof over their heads. The main beneficiaries of the high cost of housing (whether rent or mortgage) are the banks and large companies through the effective wage subsidy of housing benefit. The only way to solve this problem in the long term is a sustained large scale increase in the housing supply, driving down the cost of putting a roof over ones head. This will also put more money in people's pockets which will benefit the rest of the economy. For this step change in supply to take place, we must accept fundamental changes to planning laws, increasing the supply and therefore reducing the cost of land that can be built on - as this cost is the biggest contributor to overall housing costs, rather than the actual building.
Thanks for the contribution! There are some other housing proposals currently in that I want to read properly before I start voting. They are #250, #234 and #181.
What are the proposed changes to planning that you have in mind?
@PrivacyRich - over 9 years ago
I'm new to using Github - so not sure what to do - but I did write up the changes I was proposing into the manifesto. It was a new section on Supply of housing - which is in many ways about planning.
It is basically saying that in order to stop runaway house price inflation - whic in my view is a massive cause of inequality, lack of social mobility, poverty, and a bit part of the budget deficit problem in terms of costs of housing benefit - we need to build many more properties per year in this country. Current estimates are we need 250,000 + per year, just to meet demand, and the actual figure being built is 100K less than that.
If we want to actually bring down the cost of housing relative to income in real terms, the supply needs to be even more than that. This needs wide ranging changes, not least to the system of planning permission, which is a major cause of restriction of supply.
I also saw the Land Value Tax proposal - I am very much in support of that idea because I believe that would also create incentives for land to be built upon in a timely way.
I hope this makes sense
On 14 December 2014 at 12:09, James Smith [email protected] wrote:
Thanks for the contribution! There are some other housing proposals currently in that I want to read properly before I start voting. They are
250 https://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/250, #234
https://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/234 and #181 https://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/181.
What are the proposed changes to planning that you have in mind?
— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/251#issuecomment-66911067 .
Yeah, that's fine, the changes are in there correctly. I was just wondering what sort of changes to the planning system, that you mention in the last paragraph, you're thinking about. Changes to planning can benefit society at large, or companies like Tescos, depending on what they involve.
@philipjohn - over 9 years ago
The principle sounds good here and you mention planning policy. It'd be good to get something more specific to narrow down what you'd propose the manifesto include to address the problems you identified in your edit.
@PrivacyRich do you want to elaborate a bit more on this? We're interested in the idea, but aren't sure what changes you want to make to the planning system to allow it. ✋
The OpenPolitics Manifesto
@PrivacyRich - over 9 years ago
I'd like to submit my addition to increase the supply of new housing to reduce the basic cost of living.