Labour Housing Policy – Housing for the Many

The Labour party introduced its housing green paper – Housing for the Many – in April 2018.

This sets out a commitment to building a million ‘genuinely affordable’ homes in England over 10 years which it will expect most to be for social rent.  Overall it expects to see 250,000 homes across all tenures each year for 5 years.

There will be changes to the definition of what affordable means, with the current measure of affordable (80% of market) being replaced with social rents, a new ‘living rent’ which is targeted to be at a third of average local income and FirstBuy homes priced so that mortgage payments are no more than a third of average local household incomes.

This will require significant public investment, but this will be a shift away from housing benefit being used to cover revenue through up front capital investment.

Funding is to come from restoring housing grant significantly and a proposal to finance house building via a state investment bank.