Let’s meet London’s housing need

Meeting London’s housing need – it sounds like a simple idea, but it hasn’t happened for decades. If there is one aim politicians of all parties should meet over the next 5 years, this must be it. It is the single biggest thing we can do to improve the lives of ordinary Londoners. And with political will, a good plan and leadership, it’s possible.

As any Londoner knows, London is in the middle of a desperate housing crisis. Young Londoners who work hard in decent jobs will have to save for more than 20 years for a deposit to get their foot on the housing ladder. Rocketing rents are pushing Londoners into poverty, that they wouldn’t be experiencing if they lived anywhere else in Britain. Letting agents are holding bidding wars for rental properties and then charging tenants thousands of pounds to take on cripplingly expensive contracts for a maximum of 12 months. Families find themselves moving further away from their children’s schools, or changing schools every year when their landlord demands ten or twenty per cent more in rent and they can’t afford to stay in the area.

The statistics on London’s housing crisis are shocking: average house prices are now more than half a million pounds. The average age of a first time buyer is 38. Londoners who rent spend on average 51% of their income on housing. The average London rent is now £1,200 a month. And it goes on…

It didn’t used to be like this. When my parents moved to London in the 1960’s they were able to get a Council house, and on my dad’s bus driver salary, pay the council rent and save for a deposit to buy their own home. Today’s bus drivers stand no chance. There are knock on consequences; the housing crisis is the single biggest cause of the rising gap between rich and poor in London. When you take housing costs into account, almost one in three Londoners are living in poverty. And by the way, two-thirds of them are in work.

There are many things we could do straight away to ease the crisis: banning rip-off letting agent fees, making three year rental contracts the norm, capping the amount rents can rise by each year, stopping estate agents advertising properties abroad before they are offered to Londoners, offering local residents first option on homes to buy and closing loopholes for empty properties. But in the end, this crisis will continue to get worse until we build the same number of homes Londoners need every year.

It’s estimated that London needs 80,000 homes built every year to keep up with our growing population. Last year, we built just over 20,000! That gap between supply and demand of 60,000 per year means house prices continue to go up and rents rocket. I believe it’s time for real change. London’s politicians must put aside their differences and come together with one single aim: by the end of the next Parliament, London will build as many homes as we need every single year.

It’s a big ask, but it’s doable. We will need the Government to invest more capital on building homes. We need money for building homes devolved to London’s Government rather than Whitehall officials. We need to leverage in more private finance for building genuinely affordable homes. We need to explore every source of funding for homes . We need the Mayor to get building – a Mayoral Development Agency to take active control of London’s housing supply: managing projects from planning and funding to delivery in order to get the maximum number of homes built in the shortest time possible. And we need all London Councils to begin building Council homes again.

Meeting London’s housing need. A simple idea, but one that could bring real change and transform the lives of everyone who lives in our city.

Sadiq Khan is Shadow London Minister. Join him and 60 other speakers at Class Conference today