Ben Reeve Lewis Friday Newsround #35

[Ben Reeve Lewis has been reading all the comments on the governments new housing strategy, so you don’t have to…]

Ben in Brum

Birmingham was great last weekend. I kept my pants on you’ll be pleased to hear (the entertainment was boy band ‘Blue’, not my cup of tea – had it have been The Prodigy or my beloved Underworld I may be writing this from a cell now) and Frazzles and I wandered around the biggest German Christmas market I have ever seen, superb.

What amazed me was a casual look in a local estate agent’s window at the rental prices in Brum. A fraction of London prices. I saw a 4 bed house going for £100 a month less than I pay for a 1 bed flat in London. A man could have a life there.

On Saturday afternoon I stood at a Formica shelf at Pearce’s Seafood stall in the fantastic Bullring Market whilst eating 6 oysters and watching a mad Jamaican guy in a Tyrolean feathered hat tap dancing for my sole pleasure before he fell over completely p**sed. And you don’t see that everyday. Thank you people of Brum for being chatty, friendly, welcoming and ……well…..p**sed. Nice place.

The main story of the week has got to be …

Well you’ve got to admit, in our housing world there has only really been one story this week, the long awaited publication of the government’s cornerstone housing strategy. On Monday I printed it off, read as much as I could bear before falling over like my Jamaican tap-dancer…only through tedium rather than alcohol.

The tedious element to me wasn’t the details, which were sort of expected but the constant slagging off of Labour policies and the incessant boasting about how only the present government were going to dig us out of the mire.

There has been so much online traffic about this I thought, rather than guide you through the document itself I would point you to the various opinions on it.

Jack Dromey speaks

The one we were all looking for was Shadow Housing minister Jack Dromey who in Wednesday’s Guardian,  summing it up with:

“We have all had enough of false dawns, grand plans and press launches followed by broken promises and a failure to deliver. Sadly, a decent home at a price we can afford has never been further away than it is today”.

In a way Jack’s opinion is the least important. He is shadow minister and it wouldn’t look good if he said “Excellent Grant. Well done” but I did note his comment that Grant Shapps assertion that the 60,000 new homes built last year had actually been planned by the old Labour government.

Kevin Gulliver of Human City Institute

Research and development director of the Human City Institute, Kevin Gulliver read through his copy of the strategy and :

“it largely ignores the fundamental needs of the national housing system which centre upon under-supply of affordable housing over the long-term, an attachment to home ownership verging on the irrational, a dysfunctional planning framework, pervasive nimbyism and residualised social housing since 1979”.

David Orr is rueful

Meanwhile head of the National Housing Federation, David Orr was in a more rueful mood the government had missed an opportunity to do something more radical and useful.

I particularly liked a simple idea that he put forward, a housing solution to a housing problem and a departure from trying to jemmy housing into the broader brush strokes of Localism and the Big Society, when he suggested:

“A public investment of £1bn – matched by £8bn from housing associations – would build 66,000 affordable homes for people on low to middle incomes, create 400,000 jobs, and in doing so save the taxpayer £700m in job seekers’ allowance. Factor in additional savings in housing benefit of around £835m and you have a total benefits saving of around £1.5bn”.

Kate McCann on the effect on the elderly

The excellent and reliable Kate McCann in the Guardian took a different angle and looked at what the new strategy held for elder residents  focussing on equity release schemes and how we have had these in the past but with little regulation to stop people being ripped off.

Kate quotes a section of the strategy that says of the subject ;

“Stimulate attractive financial products in order to help older homeowners release equity safely to maintain or adapt their homes”.

But where is the protection for older home owners from equity release scammers? Sorry but I’m not convinced.

Alan Ward is optimistic

A rare note of optimism was to be found by , chair of the Residential Landlords Association  but to my mind his views were based solely on how great it is to be a landlord in the current climate of high rents rather than a balanced view of the strategy.

In that sense his interpretation was as predictable as Jack Dromey’s, in other words a self-interested assessment rather than an unbiased critical analysis.

James Pargeter has 10 reasons to be cheerful

A better stab at optimism was to be seen in The Guardian Housing network’s article written by property consultant who found 10 reasons to be cheerful  whose summary said:

“The strategy represents a welcome recognition of many of the historic and current problems facing the housing sector. It forms a positive statement of intent, against which progress can be viewed and measured into the future.

There is clearly much detail still to be developed and worked through, and no doubt there will be a number of challenges to be overcome along the way, but there are certainly opportunities for improvement here. I hope that the entire housing sector will pull together to seize some of these and make them reality”.

Ben concurs, sort of

And do you know what? I kind of agree with him. There is ‘Much detail still to be developed” and the government have no intention of even thinking about how that will happen, it’s down to us, and at the end of the day communities do know what needs to happen, not central government.

The Tories love a hand’s off approach and they love to let others run things rather than dictate policies. In that I agree with them, I hate them with a passion, but I agree with letting people power rule the day. In that sense they are like my old Trotskyist chums (I love writing that because I know how horrified Shapps would be to read it).

I have worked my entire life in housing and most of it in the area I was born and brought up in. I don’t need a government to tell me what needs to happen for the citizens I share my life with in my district.

I once had to negotiate with a violent landlord, a local well known Deptford gangster whose paper I used to deliver as a kid. We sorted it because we came from the same background and he remembered me and even called me ‘Son’…..I was 36 at the time.

If Localism is going to be the backbone of housing strategies, so be it. We don’t need Eton educated prefects to get us out of the crapper.

I don’t personally feel that the Housing Strategy holds a master plan. I think it is an impatient waving of the hands and a ‘You get on with it, I’m too busy having lunch at Quo Vadis’ approach, well if that’s what it is lets run with it. The freedom given by Localism isn’t a master plan but an abrogation of responsibility.

Get out of the way Shapps and let people sort out the mess for you.

Ben Reeve Lewis

Ben has started Home Saving Expert, to share his secrets to defending people’s homes from mortgage repossession Visit his blog and get some help and advice on mortgage difficulties and catch up with him on Twitter and check out his free report “An Encouraging note on Dealing with your Mortgage Lender” and have it sent right to your inbox.

Christmas market picture is Wikipedia commons