It looks like everyone’s favourite Tory thinktank has a plan to solve the housing crisis, and it’s pretty simple!
It said acquisition of the land would be financed by a private-public joint venture, with the government contributing 49 per cent – about £3.1bn a year – alongside institutional investors. It would represent the largest government investment in housing since the 1970s, but the report argues such commitment is required to involve private developers.
So it’s got a financial vehicle funded from the LHA bennies stream, it’s centred on either the GLA or London Councils, and it’s about buying up surplus properties for housing. So far, so indistinguishable from the Simple Plan.
There’s more emphasis on new building and conversion vice municipalising existing stock. That’s actually a cogent criticism of the original Simple Plan; I implicitly assumed the market would slide further and a lot of BTL investors would bite the dust. There’s also a pickled egg or two chucked in to make up the numbers, like prefabrication.
And naturally, no suggestion that anything might end up being anything as monstrous as yer actual council housing. But what do you expect? Anyway, it’s not actually evil, and it might even deliver some more houses, so I’m just going to chalk it up as the price of intellectual hegemony.
Nobody’s mentioned it, but if the PolEx guy is reading this, one place to look for the money would be the local authority pension funds. I nicked the idea from Danny Alexander MP.