UK chancellor plans to raise social rents to boost affordable housebuilding

21 comments

1. She really is going to go after everyone, rich or poor get ready it’s going to sting.

2. >“The sector needs long-term certainty over how rents in social and affordable housing change each year which means returning to CPI plus 1 per cent — and with absolute clarity that the government intends to stick with that plan,”

   How is LABOUR the one pushing this plan through?? Wages almost always lag behind inflation, especially when there’s a spike, making it CPI + 1% will destroy families if we experience an inflation spike and their wages aren’t keeping up. This is beyond cruel!

3. Why is it always expect lower than inflation pay rises and it’s fine for companies and everything else to go up above inflation, it’s simply an unsustainable attack on the working class.

4. The Starmerites will be along soon to tell us why this is a good thing actually.

5. This is really just an extension of pre-existing policy – setting social rent rises at CPI+1%, it had to be temporarily shelved last year when rent allowable increases 7-8%.

   On today’s CPI numbers, which are around BoEs target level , rents will be rising 3.2% each year. *I don’t know about anybody else but I haven’t had a pay rise in 4 years.*

6. But that’s solving the problem by making the problem worse. The whole point of building them is to increase supply to lower the price/rent.

7. I think this is a good move. Social housing in the context of a housing crisis, is a large public subsidy granted towards a small number of families who are shielded from the price hikes of the private sector. Why should tax payers, who mostly pay for their housing privately, subsidise families to pay a fraction of the market rate?

8. Another thing that people are forgetting is that when they force more people into work, in part to cut the welfare bill but secondly to increase the supply of Labour which in turn will supress wage growth.

   A lot of people aren’t picking up on that yet.

9. > FT reports the Chancellor will raise social rents by CPI inflation plus 1% every year for the next decade, to encourage the building of “affordable” homes.

   What the fuck?

10. They really are pushing the UK in the wrong direction. How can they end the economic stagnation if they are are taking money away from people who cannot afford it, people who make up a large percentage of society. Even if they did it will hurt many people in the process.

11. Someone’s got to pay for the over population of this country I thought all the leftys new this, taxes are going to raise too, for hospitals, GPS, over crowding of prisons, the same for schools, hotels that are in use, it’s going to get worse but you won’t be able to complain or you’ll be label a far right and locked up!!!

12. labour is so the establishment .

    Not sure why we even need the Tory party anymore

13. Bit of a dumb policy if I’m being honest, what’s the situation with the many empty apartment blocks that exist in the cities? Who owns them and why can’t normal people buy them? What about landlords and corporations who own multiple properties, what’s going to be done to force them to sell their stock to the public? Will buy-to-let be scrapped?

14. So, just to elaborate; the key to reversing 14yrs of austerity is; austerity…?

15. With every policy this pathetic lot come out with the closer we get to a Reform UK government.

16. Keep in mind that “affordable housing” is not the same as social housing. It’s simply private housing sold at 90%+ of the market rate: making it far from genuinely affordable. The term lacks a clear definition, which is why even the Tories can claim they’ve increased affordable housing.

    This means that social renters could end up subsidizing or boosting the profits of private construction companies that build these so-called affordable homes.

17. The social housing ‘charity’s’ need to be held accountable for terrible standards too. Too many times have they put profits over maintaining standards

18. “ Guaranteeing higher rents will delight housing associations but could worsen the cost of living for millions of tenants and could land the government with a much higher benefits bill.”

    Don’t worry, they’ll ignore the people impacted. 

19. Only 30% of people in social housing aren’t getting their rent paid by Housing Benefit.

    They are the only ones that will be affected by this – other than central and local gov who will have to pay out more in housing benefit to cover the raises. That or have people with no income being evicted.

20. Social housing is abused in this country just as much if not more than other welfare. Anecdotal stories of social renters owning elsewhere etc but because we have no effective (but massively bloated) public service to manage it, the abuse continues.

    This would be a popular move and should actually be much higher. Govt should just accept that 1/ abuse is happening 2/ bloated public sector can’t sort it 3/ let’s simply milk the assets then through closer to market rents to recoup losses from abuse.

21. We need social housing. Let’s look at some stats to see if we can see any concerns:

    Proportion of household reference persons who are in social housing by country of birth (%) ONS Census 2021

    Somalia 72.3

    Other Africa 52.8

    Jamaica 41.3

    Ghana 37.5

    Afghanistan 36.2

    North Africa 35.4

    Bangladesh 33.9

    Iraq 33.8

    Africa Total 32.2

    Other Caribbean 32.1

    Zimbabwe 28.6

    Nigeria 28.4

    Turkey 28.2

    Iran 27

    Other Middle East 21

    Portugal 20.5

    Ireland 20.1

    Poland 17.7

    **United Kingdom 16.8**

    Also a reminder that

    Labour scraps previous government’s ‘British workers’ social housing allocation plan

    The Labour government will not enact plan to favour UK nationals when allocating social housing.