Homes situation is a shambles

Cllr Stephen Bartley (Con) glibly argues that our housing problems can be solved simply by setting up something called a social letting agency and by “preventative measures to stop the housing waiting list growing”, which he fails to identify (Possible Solution To Housing Shortage, Letters and Opinion, Kentish Gazette, June 9).

He implies, too, that the views of others on this matter are mere ideology and of no interest to those needing homes. He is wrong on both cases.

Its certainly true that the cumulative effect of government policy over several years relating to taxes on property and capital gains on house-building and on social rentable housing has been disastrous.

But there has been an ideological underpinning to all of that in the form of belief firstly that the market holds the solution to the problem and secondly that local government has no role in house-building or ownership – both points of view to which Cllr Bartley apparently adheres.

It ought to be obvious, both in theory and through practice, that the private sector cannot and will not provide enough housing to meet the needs of our expanding population.

Even the most basic knowledge of economics indicates that private house-builders will seek to build the most profitable houses they can and to maintain a deficit of supply such as to keep prices high – in other words, they have no incentive at all to either build genuinely affordable homes, nor to build sufficient quantity of homes to meet demand.

So far as the private rental sector goes, this creates next to no additional housing stock, with existing properties being bought for sub-letting and thus removed from the ownership market.

The effects of taxation on this market are clearly invidious, which the government has belatedly sought to address.

All this is compounded by the ‘smallstate’ ideology of the Conservatives, who seem to be obsessed with minimising the role of councils.

It’s true that the disastrous removal of management of the council housing stock to third-party bodies like East Kent Housing, which have little or no democratic oversight and zero accountability, was a Blair-era Labour initiative.

However, the Tories have compounded that by extending the right to buy to housing association homes, by compelling councils to sell off their largest and most valuable homes, by persistently manipulating taxes to the benefit of existing owner-occupiers and, as we have now seen, by compelling councils to compete against each other for access to privately-owned housing to be used for rental to their own homeless.

The whole situation is a shambles. It will not be solved by the benevolence of private sector house builders, nor by adding more complexity to the market.

The only medium-term solution is for the public sector to build a large number of new houses for social rental.

Conservatives may react that councils can’t afford to do this.

I’d say if we can borrow money to invest in Whitefriars, then we can borrow money to invest in homes, too. Its about time we did. Dave Wilson Stodmarsh Road, Canterbury