Housing should be the defining issue of the next election

Today Cameron has invited a handful of the 2,000 families who are buying a home on a 95% government-backed mortgage into Downing Street. Hopefully he’ll pop over to Greenwich Peninsular, where you can buy studios, apartments, three-bedroom maisonettes and penthouses, with prices starting at £239,995.

He won’t be handing out the keys to many ‘hard working Brits’ because the development is being sold at Singapore’s St Regis Hotel.

More than 70% of new build properties in London are now being sold to buy to let investors in China, Russia and the Middle East, investing £7b in properties in the capital. And it’s becoming a depressing trend here in Greenwich and Woolwich.

Prime Place, another development, was offering one-bedroom flats from £302,000 to buy to let investors in Hong Kong. The Chinese aren’t only subsidizing our nuclear energy programme – they’re fuelling our property boom. Of the 181 properties available, only 6% were for affordable rent and 13% for joint equity sale. Under Ken Livingstone’s mayoralty, we were at least reaching 35% for affordable housing. With Boris, that commitment has been thrown on the scrapheap.

But residents are fighting back. A recent proposal to amend a planning application to add an extra three floors from 10 to 13 and 246 additional flats to a riverside development at Greenwich’s Lovell’s Wharf was defeated after locals campaigned against it.

What’s certain is property developers are not going to help us meet affordable housing targets. So let’s cut them out.

In England alone, the Housing and Communities Agency estimated there’s 64,000 hectares of derelict brownfield sites owned by either local authorities or Government bodies. That’s enough to build at least two million homes. In Greenwich and Woolwich alone, that could mean 17,000 new properties. With 13,000 people on the social housing waiting list, using brownfield sites could make a huge contribution.

But the powers of the HCA – a merger of English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation – were diminished by the Coalition’s push for ‘localism.’ Its ability to negotiate hard nationally with developers was removed and handed to local councils.

We need to give them back that power so we can put people not property developers at the heart of our housing policy. Why don’t we lease some of those brownfield sites to community land trusts – non-profit, community-based organisations that develop social and affordable housing but are owned and controlled by the community.

Run in partnership with housing co-operatives and the local authorities, community land trusts could help take the biggest cost – land – out of the equation for people looking to get on the ladder.

Innovative housing such as HomeShell – designed by Richard Rogers, built by the Sheffield Insulation Group and 90% more energy efficient than normal homes – would see flat pack two bedroom properties bought and constructed  for as little as £60,000 – the same cost as the average deposit needed to buy a house in London. This was a concept pioneered by a Labour government.

Offering joint equity homes with housing co-ops could see people getting on the property ladder with a mortgage as low as £30,000 and a £6,000 deposit. And it would avoid stamp duty. These trusts could then borrow against their assets – the homes – to build even more social housing. And to help bring the brownfield sites come into use, we could consider the Smith Institute’s excellent proposal of a Property Speculation Tax.

A PST, which is used in other countries like Germany, would have higher rate if properties are sold quickly, tapering down to lower ones the longer they are kept. Not only would it dampen down on foreign property speculation but if we set the right rate, it could generate £1b that could be ring-fenced to develop sites to become Community Land Trusts.

And whisper it quietly, but George Osborne’s idea of extending capital gains tax to foreign buyers is a great idea too. That could also be ring-fenced to fund more social housing.

Housing should be the defining issue of the next election. It fits into Labour’s cost of living agenda, shows us standing up to the elites and provides an answer that is in our own hands, not dependent on ‘nudging’ big businesses to do the right thing. For Labour to meet its commitment to build 200,000 new homes by 2020, we should make the most of what we already own.

Labour should start laying the foundations now.