Well we wanted housing to be a hot election issue and so it has become, but perhaps not in the way we anticipated.

Extending the Right to Buy to 1.3 million housing association tenants (around 25 percent already have a preserved right to buy) had been trailed for months, but it was still a shock when it appeared in the Conservative manifesto yesterday morning. My first reaction was: what’s the bloody point? All this campaigning, writing, lobbying, tweeting and yet Conservative policy makers still go ahead with an illiterate, uncosted, unworkable and possibly illegal proposal. Have we all been wasting our time? This was reflected in the letter sent out by David Orr yesterday which was suffused with a sense of despair that the Federation’s “behind the scenes” lobbying had come to nothing. Continue reading →

“Dogs are the Masters here. Twice a day they pull their humans to the nearest park, where they run and cavort as they please. They drop their waste on the grass and the humans have to clear up after them. They are given plenty of good food and can sleep all day, but their humans have to go out to work. Continue reading →

In order to make sense of the present we need to understand the past. The buildings that surround us did not arrive by accident; they are the result of political and policy decisions that often involved months and years of public debate. But the best buildings are often those that were founded on a strong vision about creating a better future. Continue reading →

Three recent reports about London seem in my mind to be linked.

First a report from the Trust for London reveals a widening gap between rich and poor across the country but more so in London than any other region. This is clearly being driven by rising housing costs, with house prices increasing by 20% last year. Second, a survey from the GLA finds that housing and the cost of living are the issues that most concern Londoners. 87% of respondents believe more housing is needed in London and 65% want more homes in their local area. When asked what the solutions were to London’s housing crisis, four measures came out neck and neck – supporting home ownership for first time buyers, making sure landlords act fairly, improving the quality of existing social housing and building new homes. Given that housing and the cost of living are inextricably linked (the cost of living crisis is a housing crisis) then housing is way out in front as the main issue affecting Londoners. Compare this to a recent IPSOS MORI poll for Britain as a whole which puts housing as 8th in the list and you can see that London is another country in housing terms. Continue reading →