Tory-led coalition should pay high price for turning dream of owning own home into a nightmare
04-15-2014
by KevinMaguire
In building his so-called recovery on the quicksands of soaring house prices and debt, George Osborne prices Generation Rent out of buying a roof over their head
Daily Mirror
The Tory-led coalition deserves to pay a high price for turning the dream of owning your own home into a nightmare for locked-out young couples.
In building his so-called recovery on the quicksands of soaring house prices and personal debt, George Osborne prices Generation Rent out of buying a roof over their head.
Once again we see him valuing the haves over the have nots, hoping rising property prices will appease owner occupiers, and we see a rentier class feasting on private tenants.
The Chancer of the Exchequer’s naked cynicism was exposed by an intervention during a Cabinet meeting at the back end of last year.
“Hopefully we will get a little housing boom,” smiled Osborne, “and everyone will be happy as property values go up”.
That permanent smirk we see on the face of one of the Tory posh boys is the death mask of traditional conservatism.
Everyone isn’t happy at prices going up by, according to surveyors, a crazy 6% a year.
Unhappiest are the young, with the age people buy their first home going up to 35 from 28 a decade ago.
I was 25 when we bought our first flat. Marriage, fatherhood and a place of your own were a holy trinity.
Today I couldn’t afford the house I live in if I had to buy it all over again because property prices are bonkers.
The proportion of us owning our own place is down to 62.5%, which is the lowest level since 1987.
The average house outside London is worth £254,000 or about 10 times what a nurse earns.
In London the average is £458,000 or around 18 times the earnings of a nurse.
Maggie Thatcher must be turning in her urn.
And the number renting privately is 18%, the highest since records started in 1980.
That’s four million people living in the clutches of private landlords who can increase rents and boot them out on a whim.
Booming house prices rippling out of London are a genuine battleground in the ConDem coalition.
Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable thinks, I’m reliably informed, that Osborne is mad to subsidise even higher prices with a Help to Vote Tory mortgage subsidy.
The 109,370 homes built last year under the ConDems was the lowest since the 1920s.
Ed Miliband, like Cable, recognises the key is building more homes.
The Labour leader has committed his Government, if he’s prime minister, to construct 200,000 a year.
That would be better than the ConDem record but far too few when millions are on council waiting lists.
Labour’s also paralysed by indecision over what to do about rapacious landlords and is fighting over rent controls to tame the rip-off merchants.
London spokesman Sadiq Khan advocated them, but housing spokeswoman Emma Reynolds insisted they aren’t party policy.
Housing is a golden opportunity for Miliband to present Labour as the party of aspiration for those who want a place of their own and are abandoned by Osborne.
The package needs to include more council houses and shackling Rachmans, as well as constructing houses to buy.
I’m told the Labour leader gets it and the party is studying how to replace housing benefit (going into the pockets of private landords) with bricks and mortar in a big building programme.
The last Labour Government failed on housing. The ConDems have fared even worse.
Miliband can unlock the election if he fixes the roof, whether the sun is shining or not.