Housing, or lack of it, is a huge national issue which no governemnt has been on top of over the last fifty years. Since the 1960s and the end of the post war boom years we have struggled to build enough new homes for people that need them. And since the Tories introduced the ‘right to buy’ which allows council and housing association tennants to buy homes that they have previously rented, the stock of available social housing simply does not keep up with demand. As more tennants have bought their homes so less and less are availble to house future families in need.

As a nation we have built some 110,000 houses over the last year, the lowest number of new houses built since the war and to put that in perspective we need to provide for 270,000 new households every year just to keep up with demand. But this is not the whole story, what is important is also the type of new homes we have built, not just the numbers. I have no figure for how many of those 110,000 new homes were built for social rents but I think we can safely assume it was a pitifully low number.

We have endless supplies here in Reading of two bedroom flats for well-off renters in the town centre and four bedroom executive homes in surrounding areas but where are the new homes for less well off tennants who are forced to rent privately and rely on housing benefits to pay the rent. In Reading we have over 10,000 people on waiting lists and we have managed to build around 100 new affordable homes last year.

Somehow we have a get developers to build affordable homes, not just homes to be snapped up by those who already own properties and will just rent out more houses and flats at sky high prices. The current planning regime does not allow local authorities to order developers to build affordable housing and the bulk of the income in previous years from ‘right to buy’ sales was not allowed to be spent on new housing so there is very little cash with which to pay for or subsidise new house building.

If developers could ever think of houses as a long term investment rather than a quick way to make money we might have a better chance of building houses for social rents but I see no signs of this happening and the present council’s actions (as opposed to their written policy) seems to be to give in to developers demands to build more executive homes and less and less sffordable housing. The council needs to demand more from developers.

We are in a crisis.