We’ll seize luxury f lats for the homeless, vows Corbyn
JEREMY Corbyn yesterday said he would tackle homelessness by letting rough sleepers move into empty luxury flats.
A Labour Government would let councils seize properties owned by investors that were ‘deliberately’ kept empty, he said.
Mr Corbyn said he would also purchase 8,000 properties ‘immediately’ to house those living on the streets.
However, there was confusion as his party later announced a more modest policy that would allow rough sleepers to move up the shortlist for housing association homes. It made no mention of using luxury flats, but Labour said the party leader’s vow was a reference to a manifesto pledge.
In an interview yesterday, Mr Corbyn also refused to admit that there was anything good about capitalism – but praised China’s communist economy.
On the issue of the homeless, he was asked on BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show: ‘Would a Labour Government perhaps put the empty flats – which are all around – and the homeless people together, and oblige the people who own these flats they can’t sell to let homeless people in them?’
Mr Corbyn replied: ‘We would give local authorities the power to take over deliberately kept vacant properties.
‘There’s something grossly insulting about the idea you’d build some luxury block [and] deliberately keep it vacant, the investor is going to make ten, 12 per cent a year.’
Asked about figures last week that showed how rough sleeping has more than doubled since 2010, Mr Corbyn said: ‘[We would] immediately purchase 8,000 properties across the country to give immediate housing to those people that are currently homeless.’
But a Labour announcement later clarified that rough sleepers would be given housing association properties as they became available, rather than immediately. These affordable homes would then be replaced in a wider
‘Grossly insulting’
housebuilding programme. Labour’s manifesto claimed it will build 100,000 ‘genuinely affordable’ properties for rental or purchase each year.
In yesterday’s wide-ranging interview, Mr Corbyn insisted Labour would intervene in a ‘number of ways’ to help social tenants, private renters and firsttime buyers.
He said the country needed ‘social priorities’ that put the homeless above the rights of foreign investors to buy and sell properties before they were even built.
He was also asked whether he believed the capitalist system ‘only benefits people at the top’, as claimed in a report by Oxfam. Mr Corbyn said the charity had pointed out some ‘very uncomfortable truths’ but would not say if he wanted the free market system to disappear in the UK.
He vowed not to give Britain a version of the Chinese economy should he be elected prime minister, but said it had taken ‘a lot of people out of poverty’.
Last night, Tory MP Andrew Bridgen proposed his own solution for homeless people, saying MPs should offer their homes when they are not living in them. ‘I am happy to allow homeless people to use my taxpayer-funded flat when I am not in Parliament, as long as all other MPs agree to give up their flats to alleviate the homeless problem.’