Profit and the housing shortage
A book published in paperback this year reveals a sorry tale of 60 years of legislation fuelling speculation in land, paving the way for the housing crisis…
Housing
Housing
A community's fight against buy-to-let profiteers
Areas around Britain’s universities are being blighted as once-stable populations are replaced by student lets and multiple occupation – but communities are fighting back. Workers looks at an example from Liverpool…
Housing: Overcrowding doubles
The number of households living in overcrowded privately rented properties has doubled in the last decade.
Deepening housing crisis in Manchester
9 December 2019
The housing crisis sweeping Britain shows no sign of abating. Its effects are to be found all over the country, not least in the much-vaunted “Northern powerhouse” of Manchester.
Housing: New starts down
House building across England has fallen to the slowest quarterly rate for three years.
The big opportunity for homes fit for workers
The need for truly affordable housing is universally acknowledged, yet it is not delivered. Brexit, implemented with control over the economy and migration, will allow Britain to plan properly to house its people…
Debt and privatisation
The Addison Act of 1919 had given council housing a national character, funded nationally through the ring-fenced Housing Revenue Account (HRA). Borrowing was at a low rate linked to government gilts to offset risk.
Council cuts killing homeless people
28 June 2019
More homeless people die in the areas with the biggest council cuts, a new study suggests.
On the streets in Manchester
11 March 2019
Homelessness is growing in Britain, in part due to the shortage of housing. It's worst in London, but is growing fast elsewhere in England – the Midlands, Yorkshire, and the North-West.
Home truths - hard times
28 February 2019
Young workers are finding it harder to set up their own home. This is due to rising house prices, static wages and low levels of employment.
Housing Crisis: Not just in the cities
The deliberate under-resourcing of publicly funded housing often raises images of cities, with tower blocks and urban decay.
Homeless dying as housing crisis worsens
9 January 2019
The number of homeless people dying on the streets or in temporary accommodation has surged 24 per cent in just five years.
NZ says no to foreign buy-ups
New Zealand is acting against foreign buy-ups of property. The country’s previous government was happy to allow rich foreigners to snap up land and property.
'Right to buy' - but no money
The demand for housing continues to rise, with continuing uncontrolled migration into Britain playing a significant part.
NHS land sell-off for 'unaffordable' housing
11 January 2018
A nurse would have to save for 53 years just to put down a deposit on homes built on sold-off NHS land, says a new report.
Grenfell: no control, no accountability
Tenants at Grenfell Tower could not have done more to attract attention to the risk of fire. But they were up against more than penny-pinching profiteers – a whole system had been designed to take control away from them…
PFIs – lucrative and lethal
Remember Private Finance Initiatives? These 30-year lease-back deals to bring public money into private hands are now notorious as very bad value for money.
Vultures feast on housing shortage
27 November 2017
A case going through the High Court illustrates the way regeneration schemes are often merely a curtain raiser for the demolition of council-owned housing.
Helping to keep house prices high
30 October 2017
Data journalists on the Sunday Times have exposed how housebuilders are making a mint out of Right to Buy.
They call it a housing market, but it’s just chaos
After Brexit, we must seize the opportunity to roll back privatisation, the market, and the free movement of labour and capital to rethink Britain’s housing…
Council rakes in millions from housing sales
4 August 2017
Kensington and Chelsea council raised £4.5 million from the sale of two council houses last year, more than the £3.5 million outlay on the controversial cladding system added to Grenfell Tower.
House the People
House the People
Thursday 28 September 2017 19:30
CPBML Public Meeting, Thursday 28 September, 7.30pm
Brockway Room, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL
Housing in Britain is broken. Instead of filling a need, it is an investment from which huge profits can be made by taking advantage of the acute rise in demand. Meanwhile, council housing is left to rot – with deadly consequences. Come and discuss. All welcome.
Manchester: flats, flats, flats
Manchester is now top of the table for growth in house prices, having increased by 8.8 per cent in the year ending February.
Housing isn't working
Across large parts of Britain houses and flats are not even being built to be homes – just investments…
Housing: Micro-flats
Plans are being made to convert offices into flats as small as 16 square metres.
Housing: billions in subsidies for landlords
Figures published in August show that over £9 billion a year is now paid in housing benefits to people living in private rented accommodation.
Housing at the mercy of speculators and the EU
25 March 2016
The government is running down social housing intending to prime the market for foreign takeover. Fearing that Britain may exit the EU, speculators are already leaping into the property scrum.
Housing: a national issue, and a class issue
The new Housing and Planning Bill cultivates and exploits the crisis in housing to strengthen the class power of a tiny minority…
Action over housing
5 October 2015
The phrase “housing crisis” is a daily media prod to the London commuter. Blink and it’s still there. But we’ve been stood immobile and blinking for far too long.