#UNDC13 Affordable, Safe, Adequate, Secure Housing for All - Wednesday

This is my speech to conference while moving a NDC amendment to to Motion 33 which was orignally from my branch and was adopted by London Region at our AGM.

Conference, your NEC believes that it is important to add to the main motion's call for more and better homes for all, the evidence found in the recent report by the Affordable Homes Alliance, Housing Voice, which is supported by UNISON.

The report evidenced the need for a mass house building target of at least 250,000 homes per year for the next 20 years - including at least 80,000 local authority and housing association homes.

Conference, this target is achievable. The simple fact of the matter is that there is a desperate and absolute housing shortage in this land. And there is no good reason for this shortage.

Remember the first Labour government 1945-1950 despite the economy being ruined by the 6 previous years of total war built one million new homes. While at the same time it built the National Health Service and the modern welfare state. In the 1950’s it was not uncommon for 300,000 new homes to be built, every single year. At its peak in my lifetime in 1968 we built 353,000 homes. The great majority at affordable rents or mortgages.

Conference, while I don’t think anyone here really doubts that we will need increases in progressive taxation in order to pay for all the things that we want to improve our society - to get people back at work, building things, making things, doing things of value to our community rather than just rotting on the dole.

Which will save public money and get the economy growing again. We also need to look at different ways of funding the new homes we so desperately need.

Housing Voice also evidenced and called for at least £5 billion of the billions of pounds currently being spent by the Bank of England on buying government gilts – the so called Quantitative Easing (QE) programme. To be invested instead in low cost housing bonds or other similar measures that that can be used to fund new build instead of lying around in bank vaults.

We should also mobilise the trillions of pounds in workers public and private pension funds to invest in homes rather than shinny new City office blocks

Conference, the simple fact of the matter is that we face a housing famine and that for too long housing need has been ignored. We need to build more affordable, safe, adequate secure homes for all and we need to think out of the box a little on how to fund it.

Conference please support this amendment please support this motion. (both were passed. Picture of vote from unison website)

Housing Voice ‘To Have or Have Not? Taking Responsibility for Tomorrow's Affordable Homes Today"

I left TUC Congress early today to return to London for this morning's launch of the Housing Voice report at the House of Commons.

Housing Voice is an independent affordable housing alliance with cross party political support. For the past year they have carried out a national inquiry, taking evidence up and down the Country.

Over 60 organisations and 3000 individuals have given evidence. Today the report was published. I was there to make a response on behalf of UNISON. This is the press release and full report.

 

There was around 40 people present including MPs from all the main political parties. On the main panel was Liberal Democratic Stephen Gilbert MP (who said he was the only MP to be still living at home with his parents), Conservative Mark Pawsey MP and Labour Shadow Housing Minister, Jack Dromey MP. 

Not everyone agreed with everything in the report but there was more consensus than I expected.

There is lots and lots of good proposals but one of the big ideas is to use £5 billion of the recently announced £50 billion in Quantitative Easing (QE) to buy low interest housing bonds rather than government gilts. This money is then used to invest in affordable housing. 

 

In many ways the problem and solution to the crisis in affordable housing is the bleeding obvious. There is an absolute shortage of homes in all tenures - home ownership, social housing and private rented. Nearly everyone gets this big picture, this is why nearly 50% of UNISON members have grown up children still living at home.

Supply and demand means that cost of housing in many parts of the UK is simply unaffordable.  The only market solution to reduce cost is to build more new homes. The only social solution is to build more new homes with genuinely affordable rents.

 

Over the next 3 years we will spend only £4.5 billion on building new social homes while we spend a staggering £93 billion on housing benefit.

Lord Larry Whitty introducedthe report by saying such is the crisis 250k new homes are needed each year for the next 20 years. Last year only 110k were built.

 

The problem is not planning permission, nor is it a land bank (supply) problem. With huge unemployment in constructionand development, capacity is not a blockage either. The problem is money.

Extra government support and QE can be used to provide that money, build affordable homes and get Britain working again. Get people off the dole and build homes, get them paying taxes and spending money in the economy. 
 

I also picked on the recommendation that pension funds are encouraged to invest in new homes. While it is the responsibly of the state to make sure and enable their citizens to have adequate shelter. I can say as a pension trustee that schemes are crying out for suitable vehicles to invest in long term, secure, inflation linked products such as residential housing.

The problem lies with many advisers and fund managers who think its all just "too difficult" and prefer investing in warehouses and retail because that is what they are use to.  Unlike the rest of the world where pension schemes actively invest in residential property.   

Appropriately the meeting stopped at 11.30 just after the Parliamentary bell rang for prayers. I'm not religious but I did have another bleeding obviousthought.

 

(I was pleased that afterwards Jack Dromey MP agreed to speak at a future meeting of my UNISON Housing Association branch). Check out Red Brick account of meeting here.

Bank of England investigates itself and finds its "Not Guilty" over QE

Well, that's okay then. Never mind perfectly sound pension schemes are closing left, right and centre. The Bank of England has looked into whether its ongoing policy of Quantitative Easing (QE) has any negative effects and has concluded the good outweighs the bad.

Apparently the fact that QE has benefited the rich (top 5%) the most isn't of concern to this Coalition cabinet of millionaires either.  I do wonder why?

The cut in gilts yields due to QE is helping to make many private sector DB pension schemes seem unaffordable and adding to the pressure for them to close. It increases the so called "deficits" which due to current abnormal 200 year market low conditions are already pretty meaningless. 

This has nothing to do with poor investment returns or increases in life expectancy. This is solely down to a discredited and outdated accountancy measure ("mark to market") which the Bank of England is aware of but does nothing about and while the Government has promised not to idly stand by and watch good pension schemes go to the wall, so far, it has done nothing either.