CSPG Horizontal Logo

Act Now: Housing

A visual representation of the issues involved in Housing
"Act Now: Housing" by the Common Sense Policy Group is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Britain is marked by gross regional inequalities in housing costs, falling levels of ownership, and high levels of homelessness. It has an unresponsive and inflexible private housebuilding sector that is failing to meet needs for sustainability and affordability. With growing intergenerational inequalities in property ownership and rising interest rates, there is an increasing squeeze on mortgage holders at precisely the point they are likely to be raising children. The crisis in social care and the likelihood of payment at the point of use for those with property means that not even inheritance offers a means of improving conditions. We show how reform can end the housing crisis quickly. We can ensure social stability through a programme that changes regressive council tax bands, eliminates leasehold, discourages empty properties and controls rents must be coupled with a social housing building programme. At a time of ultra-insecurity, we can easily protect mortgage holders through ‘right-to-stay’, ‘right-to-sell’ and ‘right-to-buy-back’ schemes, where those at risk of repossession can transfer in and out of ownership to stay in their houses while circumstances fluctuate. Finally, we must introduce and enforce criminal sanctions against those landlords and bankers whose actions deprive us of our houses or make them dangerous to live in.

Recommendations

The Government should:

  1. End regressive taxation that punishes those in lower value housing by introducing a Proportional Property Tax, which is outlined in the main report.
  2. Support social stability by enhance the existing ‘right-to-stay’ into a ‘right-to-sell’, giving mortgagors the right to become tenants rather than face eviction. 
  3. Discourage waste by introducing taxes on second homes, holiday homes and empty commercial property.
  4. End taxes on spare bedrooms to ensure that every family can live in a home with a spare room for visitors.
  5. Build as many publicly owned houses as building capacity permits to address the housing crisis, with funding designated by the National Investment Bank and construction driven forward by the National Building Service. 
  6. Ensure that our Social Safety Net is sufficient that housing benefit can be withdrawn over time as social housing capacity increases to remove the direct transfer of wealth from government to landlords. 
  7. Introduce fair rent control and eliminate feudal payments, such as leasehold, for which no benefit is provided and which punish existence.
  8. Make squatting and all other acts that are done purely to seek shelter and not to steal items for profit once again civil, not criminal, offences. 
  9. Make illegal actions by landlords and bankers that deprive people of their home and shelter criminal, rather than civil, offences, since their actions demonstrably harm life. 
  10. Build new homes that are planned to last for centuries, both for sustainability and value for buyers.