Voting #3: Housing

Hi all,

Welcome to the last post of the Voting series (that's a music pun for those musicians out there). 

Today I'm looking at the state of housing in the forthcoming election - because it's all very well being educated and getting a job but if we can't buy anywhere to live then it's all a bit pointless. 

In 2013, The Guardian reported that the number of 20-34 year olds living at home was up to 3.2 million in the UK. Now, obviously this will be due to a vast array of personal and economic problems, but one of the reasons is certainly houses prices being as high as they are. 

So, for the final time, here are the Conservative Party's policies on housing: 

 

• Build more homes that people can afford, including 200,000 new Starter Homes exclusively for first-time buyers under 40. 

• Extend the Help to Buy Equity Loan scheme to 2020 to help more people onto and up the housing ladder, and introduce a new Help to Buy ISA to support people saving for a deposit. 
• Give more people the chance to own their home by extending the Right to Buy to tenants of Housing Associations and create a Brownfield Fund to unlock homes on brownfield land. 
• Ensure people have more control over planning and protect the Green Belt. 

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Labour:
 

• BUYING:
• Create a £5 billion ‘Future Homes Fund’ and make sure first time buyers "are first in line".
• Build 200,000 homes every year by 2020, a statistic they say is "almost double the current level". This will additionally create up to 230,000 jobs in construction.
• Introduce new ‘use it or lose it’ land powers for local authorities which means no developer can sit on land without using it.

• RENTING:
• Introduce a ceiling on excessive rent rises and make stable three-year tenancies the rule, not the exception.
• Ban rip-off letting fees, saving renters over £600.
• Create a national register of private landlords to drive up standards of rental properties and drive out rogue landlords.

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Lib Deb:

• They aim to build 300,000 homes a year, including in 10 new Garden Cities.
• New Rent to Own homes which means that your monthly payments steadily buy you a stake in your property.
• Introduce a new Help to Rent tenancy deposit loans to help young people get into their first place.
• Cut Council Tax by £100 for 10 years if you insulate your home.
• Ban landlord from letting out homes tenants cannot reasonably afford to heat.
• Create up to five new settlements beteen Oxford and Cambridge.

 

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UKIP:

• Force local authorities to bring back into use empty houses, of which in England alone there are 279,000.
• Charge the owners of empty houses 50% more of the applicable rate of council tax with the exception of home owners who are in the Armed Forces.
• Incentivise brownfield development by giving developers up to £10,000 grants to carry out essential remedation work.
• Prevent foreign nationals from gaining access to social housing until they have lived and paid UK Tax and National Insurance for a minimum of 2 years.
• Re-invest 100% of the profits from the Right To Buy Scheme back into building housing.
• Right to Buy and Help to Buy schemes will only be available to UK Nationals and will not be available to any foreign nationals unless they have served in the armed forces.

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Green:

• Take steps to ensure that development is more evenly distributed across the whole of the cuntry, so reducing pressure on housing, particulary in the South East.
• Introduce new higher Council Tax bands for more expensive homes.
• Higher rates of Council Tax for empty homes.
• Scrap Help to Buy as the Green Party believe it does nothing to help with those in the greatest housing needs, this will, they say, save £600 million.
• Minimise development on Greenfield Sites wherever possible.
• Introduce Right to Rent where local councils will step in to help those in difficulty with their mortgage to rent their homes.
• Diversify the house-building industry to mean that more homes are built by small and medium-sized building companies and by community-led and cooperative initiatives.
• Provide 500,000 social rented homes.
• Raise the social housing budget from £1.5 billion a year to £6 billion a year in the lifetime of the Parliament.
• Provide more rights for homeless people.
• Provide single people and childless couples the same regard as families in the eyes of local authorities.

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Apologies for not addressing SNP and Plaid Cymru in this post I just didn't have the time.

You can find all the links to the full manifestos on my first blog in the series 'Voting #1: Education'. Enjoy reading this one and Happy Voting on Thursday!

If you'd like to re-read (and I encourage you to) my general points on voting, they can also be found in the Education post. 

Once again if I've missed any policies out do just insert a copy, or alternatively, if you'd like to join my mailing list, drop me a line at phyllidam6464@gmail.com.

As for the future of this blog, you can now look forward to general artsy feminist ramblings once more.

Have a good day all. 

Lots of love,

Philly x