At The Guardian: On Housing Policy

This went live yesterday, attracting a deluge of comments - a deluge of two, last time I looked. As I observe below, housing's not very sexy, is it? Still, hope you find what follows informative.

London has housing problems. Where to start? In a city of seven and a half million around 330,000 households are on waiting lists for social housing and around 60,000 in temporary accommodation. Every year 3,000 still sleep rough. Meanwhile the housing market, enduring index of British insanity, excludes all but the best off. Thousands of otherwise self-sufficient young adults still live with their parents because they can't afford to do anything else. The combined effects of population turnover, City fortunes and incoming labour ingrain chronic inequality. In London, the rich get richer while the poor wait in line and Polish workers have kipped in public toilets in Stamford Hill. At the same time, 85,000 London dwellings stand empty. What's a mayoral candidate to do?

"On one thing they and the voters agree: the supply of "affordable" homes must be increased. But how? And what counts as "affordable" anyway? When talking to London housing organisations, all wrestling with this issue in different ways, two headline themes emerge. One is that whichever candidate prevails he can only, as one put it, "Have influence around the edges of things"; developers, councils and market forces make the running; the mayor's power is to interfere, although this will soon increase substantially. The other is that Livingstone, Johnson and Paddick are all offering something worthwhile, and that none has a monopoly on virtue.

Ken especially protests that this isn't so. His campaign depends on compiling a "progressive" coalition starkly opposed to Boris the hapless, reactionary beast, and his housing manifesto is tailored accordingly. It majors on his "50 percent" policy, that half "all new housing in London should be affordable." Pointing to Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet Councils, he claims that Tory boroughs can't be bothered to house the have-nots and that his Tory rival, who'd dump the "50 percent" strategy, would "concentrate housing policy in high priced and luxury development."

Johnson, of course, sees things differently. His target for "affordables" is the same as Livingstone's - 50,000 over the next three years - and he says he'll "work with the boroughs" to achieve it, rather than by telling them what to do. Is his programme plausible? From the housing sector comes a mixture of skepticism and measured welcome. At a hustings on Tuesday, critics from the floor took issue with his plans to assist first time-buyers. His First Steps Housing Scheme is designed for those who've been priced off the property ladder yet don't qualify for government help as key workers. The aim is to produce homes 20 percent cheaper than comparable ones nearby, but it was argued that this would still exclude too many.

Yet while Johnson's pitch is tuned to aspiring home-owners, his social housing offer held some appeal for my contacts too. One, a natural Ken voter, doubted the value of his "50 percent" policy. The argument was that poor boroughs already concentrate housing provision on the poor, and do they really want to be forced to provide more? The more poor residents they accommodate, the more the demands on other council services that are already over-stretched. The point was made that most London Tories are more Blairite than Thatcherite and that perhaps a Tory mayor bearing Dave's sword of social justice would have more luck with persuading Tory boroughs to reach and even exceed a 50 percent "affordable" figure, albeit in some cases 50 percent of not a great deal.

Brian Paddick's proposals have been far less detailed so far, but they lay heavy stress on increasing the supply of rented homes. He wants Councils to finance housing associations to create "a parallel market in affordable rented accommodation," of high quality and low cost instead of paying "millions" to private landlords to house homeless families. Councils, he says, should exercise their compulsory purchase powers to bring more empty homes back into use and - in common with Johnson - identifies unused land owned by private sector bodies that could be sold cheaply to private sector investors in return for their building good homes with low rents.

Which candidate has the best policies for those Londoners in greatest need? My contacts chewed the question over carefully. They'd all welcome more detail from Paddick. One liked aspects of Johnson's but thought other parts eccentric and reckoned Livingstone's the most coherent and deep. Another was very torn, and not only about policy. The style of Livingtone's regime was described as rigid, too top-down and even "bullying." On the other hand, Johnson was seen as an unknown quantity, the more so because he won't be revealing who he'll hire to put his plans into effect: "Surely he could give us some idea?"

Not very sexy is it, housing policy? Not very easy to understand, either - or to do justice to in a confined space. Help me out here, would you readers? Try Ken's, try Boris's and try Brian's for yourselves, and let me know what you think. Comments from candidates and London housing experts especially welcome (remember, you can post anonymously)."

Also available as a Cif original.