Sheffield Homelessness At All-Time High

[Longcol]

9 minutes ago, Anna B said:

IMO the homelessness epidemic is caused by lack of affordable housing. Shortages and greed have forced prices and rents sky high, and many people simply cannot afford them on ordinary wages, and still keep up with their bills.. 

And there are still over 1 million unoccupied homes in the UK - although often in areas of high unemployment eg the North East,

 

Country needs to do some serious building of affordable social housing, especially in cities.

 

 

 

[peak4]

A few more from my bookmarks;

How Thatcherism laid the foundations of the housing crisis  Financial Times - Book review

‘Municipal Dreams’ explores what happened when decent housing came to be seen as an unaffordable luxury

 

The story of social housing   Shelter
Learn how social housing has changed over the years and what we must do to revive it

For generations, social housing played a vital role in meeting the housing needs of people across the country, giving millions the quality and dignity of life that insecure and unaffordable private renting could not. Today, England’s much-reduced stock of social housing is continuing to shrink, making it tightly rationed and unable to play the same role.

Last year we lost more than 14,000 more social homes than we built. Combine this with rising house prices and it’s easy to see why more and more people have no option but to try getting by in insecure and often unaffordable, privately rented housing.

 

Thatcher’s Right To Buy damned as “a levelling down failure” Landlord Today

The programme of selling off council houses pioneered by Margaret Thatcher has been a strategic failure adding to inequality in Britain.

That’s the view of a new report from the Chartered Institute of Housing.

It says Right To Buy - which remains in place in England but has been scrapped in the rest of Britain - has led to many ex-council homes finding their way into the unregulated private rented sector (currently 40 per cent and likely to continue to rise), thus undermining the ambition to boost home ownership.

 

Tories vote down law requiring landlords make their homes fit for human habitation  The Independent

According to Parliament’s register of interests, 72 of the MPs who voted against the amendment are themselves landlords who derive an income from a property.
Communities minister Marcus Jones said the Government believed homes should be fit for human habitation but did not want to pass the new law that would explicitly require it.

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6 minutes ago, peak4 said:

 

Thatcher’s Right To Buy damned as “a levelling down failure” Landlord Today

The programme of selling off council houses pioneered by Margaret Thatcher has been a strategic failure adding to inequality in Britain.

That’s the view of a new report from the Chartered Institute of Housing.

It says Right To Buy - which remains in place in England but has been scrapped in the rest of Britain - has led to many ex-council homes finding their way into the unregulated private rented sector (currently 40 per cent and likely to continue to rise), thus undermining the ambition to boost home ownership.

 

 

Right to Buy is IMHO the reason that many people say that councils give priority to "immigrants" in council housing, when in fact they're tenants of private landlords.

[peak4]

Personally I didn't, and still don't, object to  the  sale of the council houses.
What I find unforgivable was the active prevention of councils building more stock to replace those they sold.
Councils were in an ideal position to provide employment of builders etc, and regulation of replacement stock, effectively becoming the employers.
As a result, not only did we lose the housing stock, we also passed on the responsibility to build more to private enterprise, which in turn led to the closure of training schools for young tradespersons. 

[peak4]

The other issue, is where did the money raised from Right to Buy end up??
THE DAMAGING LEGACY OF RIGHT TO BUY  New Economics Foundation
Boris Johnson wants to extend right to buy to housing associations. But he's ignoring the grave costs of the policy.

Right to buy embedded the notion of a ‘property owning democracy’ into the British political psyche and brought Thatcher into power in 1979 through a mass of working-class votes.

At the moment, it allows council tenants to purchase their homes at a large discount: up to £116,200 cheaper in London and £87,200 elsewhere.

Much of the money from this purchase is sent to the Treasury, with the council allowed to retain a portion, as long as they spend the portion on additional affordable homes in a manner approved by central government.

Johnson wants to extend this policy to housing associations, who today hold the majority of affordable housing stock. Since its inception, approximately 2m sales of social housing have taken place under right to buy. 

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9 minutes ago, peak4 said:

Personally I didn't, and still don't, object to  the  sale of the council houses.
What I find unforgivable was the active prevention of councils building more stock to replace those they sold.
Councils were in an ideal position to provide employment of builders etc, and regulation of replacement stock, effectively becoming the employers.
As a result, not only did we lose the housing stock, we also passed on the responsibility to build more to private enterprise, which in turn led to the closure of training schools for young tradespersons. 

Totally agree - receipts from council house sales were earmarked to reduce Local Authority debt which was already being  comfortably managed going back 35 years or so. Completely unnecessary unless your grasp of economics comes from your parents  running a shop in Grantham.

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13 hours ago, SheffieldForum said:

What the heck?!

 

How are we conflating the homelessness issue in Sheffield with immigration?!

 

Speak to some of the homeless charities (Archer Project, NOMAD, Roundabout, etc) in Sheffield and see what they say are the causes of homelessness — I bet not one of them give immigration as a major reason.

 

 

Worked in the sector - the initial impetus for many of the homeless charities in Sheffield was the "Care In the Community" policy in the 80's - which effectively was emptying Middlewood by giving patients their belongings in a carrier bag and their bus fare to town.

[redruby]

At the end of the day though, you are basically saying ‘more houses should be built’.  That is fine, but if the population keeps growing we will then to build more. And more. And more.  It’s very easy to start sitting on a high horse and crying racism if immigration is mentioned but it really doesn’t matter where people are from, they are people and need somewhere to live.  Those that say there is plenty of room have a completely reckless disregard of the environment.  Freeing up empty properties and restricting second homes would help a little but it’s enough to solve this alone. Let’s just take one example to illustrate this.  Flooding.  If we keep building on greenfield sites, there will be more flooding.  Building on floodplains is madness but it keeps happening.  But building on any greenfield site will make an area more vulnerable to flooding. And it’s not just the houses, it’s the new roads that would need to be built.  Are people really so oblivious to the environment? The fact that more people could, in theory be accommodated,  does not mean it is sensible to do so. And there will always be a tipping point when we actually become ‘full’.  It is far from sensible to consider reaching this point as a target rather than something to be avoided.    Your descendants won’t thank you.

Perhaps some people haven’t noticed how much more crowded public transport and the roads are compared to 20-25 years ago? Between mid-1996 and mid-2021, the population grew by 8.9 million (15.3%).  I just find it mind blowing that people think it’s sustainable to continue at this rate without dire consequences.  

[Irene Swaine]

It's all so depressing. It shouldn't be up to places like The Salvation Army to sort out the government's failings. I do believe the money is there in the post. How many millions have we posted to the Ukraine in the last 2 years? This is British tax money that is supposed to benefit British people. 

[GabrielC]

4 minutes ago, Irene Swaine said:

It's all so depressing. It shouldn't be up to places like The Salvation Army to sort out the government's failings. I do believe the money is there in the post. How many millions have we posted to the Ukraine in the last 2 years? This is British tax money that is supposed to benefit British people.

True. The Salvation Army are really struggling to cope so are food banks no financial help from the government just relying on donations which are getting less.