Let’s Build Houses

It is news to nobody that the UK is suffering a housing crisis. It is particularly not news to young people forced into insecure rented accommodation with ever increasing rents and diminishing hopes of security, stability and a home they can call their own.

We owe the next generation a revolution in housing. Labour promises to regulate the rental market are a good start, but they deal with a symptom. The disease of under-supply – even with the promised additional 200,000 homes by 2020, we will still be falling behind what is needed. We need 250,000 a year, now to solve the crisis. At least.

For years the national conversation about housing has been dominated by the haves. Rising house prices for those who own seen only as a boost to their assets not as the existential threat to the way of life we yearn for our children and our children’s children.

For far too long political narrative – particularly around social housing – has been dominated by the small band of loud NIMBYs who block planning and rail loudly from their comfortable homes against the interests of their communities.

This has to stop.

Labour cannot only be a party that supports the have nots, but it must never be a Party that ignores and sidelines them. We came dangerously close to that when we refused to tackle the issue of housing shortage while in government. Never again can we duck this fight. Morally, economically and socially we must do what is right.

The Labour Party often talks of hard choices.  We should be under no illusion that if we are elected next year there will be many of these to come. Many that we will be unhappy and uncomfortable with. But sometimes doing the hard thing politically is about standing up for our values and being counted. About taking on vested interests, columnists, headline writers and NIMBYs and saying “No More”. No more to land banking. No more to blocked planning applications. No more to rules that stymie councils and housing associations  from building the housing they need to house our communities and build new neighbourhoods.

Politics in this country is in a time of incredible upheaval. Our country faces huge challenges that require our ambitions and solutions to be as big as our dreams. As big as our challenges. As big as the future we want to deliver for the people of our country.

When Britain came out of the Second World War we were a country that had been devastated and broke. But we were wise enough then to in housing. The Attlee Government built a million new homes – 80% of which were social housing. Try telling one of the occupiers of those “homes for heroes” about the stigma of social housing.

We may not have gone through an event as horrendous as the Second World War, but the challenge we face today is just as huge. The solutions may come at a more local level (many Labour councils are already doing incredible work building new social homes despite the odds so stacked against them) but they must be supported by incentives, freedoms and the cultural and political support of national government.

And this should not be expensive. For every pound invested in housing, there is a 240% return in investment. And due to the nature of housing that investment stays locally. It is shown in local jobs, infrastructure and facilities.

The next five years are going to be tough whoever is in government. But we need wins. What better difference could we make to the lives of the people of our country than to deliver enough decent quality homes for life to house everyone in need?

That’s why at Labour Party Conference 2014, we’re having an fringe event to talk about how we build the homes Britain needs, if you want to come along and join in the discussion, check out our Facebook event page.