In a recently proposed Green Paper, the Housing Minister Yvette Cooper has pledged an £8 billion investment in housing in a bid to end the housing crisis. The report also has suggestions on how to help first time buyers onto the property ladder.
In the Green Paper, councils will be forced to identify land in which they could build new homes. The number of social homes that will be built will increase to 50,000 by 2011 and aim to deliver about 200,000 affordable new homes in three years.
Our view
Although this appears to be a huge number of homes being built, we believe that at that rate it will take around 32 years to clear the backlog of housing problems. This will need huge input of housing associations, lenders, financiers, contractors and local authorities. However, each has their own vested interests and they will, therefore not work together in harmony. We believe the only way forward is to go back to a ‘council house building’ style program of the 1950’s with shared ownership facilities from prospective borrowers to assist in funding.
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