A suggestion that up to 50 per cent of new homes built in London should be affordable has come in for sharp criticism from the house building sector.
A register of public land recently found 40,000 sites in London could be developed delivering 130,000 homes, claims Labour London Mayor hopeful Sadiq Khan.
He also says he will guarantee that all part-rent, part-buy homes bought on mayoral land - some 10,000 - will be sold to Londoners registered as voters for five years or more. He will also exercise rent controls.
Khan says the push for more affordable housing is required because “ordinary Londoners are being priced out of our city, pushed further and further out.”
But the Home Builders’ Federation has told the International Business Times that: "There are intense financial pressures on sites in London, driven by the extremely high cost of land. Affordable housing limits have to be realistic. Imposing unrealistic targets will make developments unviable, so preventing sites coming forward and reduce the supply of housing – including affordable ones – still further."
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More excuses and weasel words from housebuilders/developers. Truth is, they'd rather sit on land and watch it rise in value rather than actually go about building genuinely affordable homes. Maybe the government should employ some housebuilders who are actually willing to, you know, build homes. I know, I know, a sacrilegious thought.
Fully behind Khan on this. London has become completely unaffordable - to both buy and rent in - since Boris took over City Hall. Something needs to change. It won't be easy, and there will be plenty of barriers placed in his way, but we can't keep saying no, no, no every time someone suggests a large-scale housebuilding programme. We managed it in the 50s when we were broke, why can't we manage it now?
The present set of affairs - with house prices (especially in London) rising at silly rates and rents growing twice as fast as wages - is not sustainable for the long-run, and does no-one in the property industry (buyers, sellers, tenants, landlords, estate agents, letting agents, conveyancers, etc) any good.
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