London’s housing crisis is set to escalate even further as figures show the construction of new socially rented homes in the capital is collapsing.
Statistics from the Department of Communities and Local Government reveal that the number of new socially-rented homes that began to be constructed in the city fell below 5000 in the most recent year for the first time in over a decade. There were just 4,790 new social home-build starts in 2015/16 compared to 7,860 in 2010/11. London’s population soared by around half a million in that period.
The figures for the most recent quarter are especially troubling, recording just 660 new starts in the latest period, a fall from over 2000 in the first quarter of 2015/16.
As alarming as these statistics are, they only tell half the story. Many of these new homes will be ‘affordable’ rather than priced at social rents. This means that rents could be as high as 80% of those in the local private sector, whilst they may also be let on fixed five years tenancies. Some local authorities are now prioritising these homes for what they call ‘key workers’ – meaning teachers, coppers and social workers. This is not social housing in a form that anyone would recognise.
Astonishingly London borough’s are also selling off social housing stock leading to a loss of 4000 homes in 2014/15, many due to Right To Buy. The London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham flogged 418 social houses between 2010 and 2015 and replaced them with just 170 new homes. Construction did not begin on one single socially rented home in this borough in 2015/16, and the same applies to Kingston Upon Thames, Harrow and the City of London.
Homelessness is soaring in the capital with the number of people sleeping on the streets at record levels. Appallingly the number of empty homes has also hit a seven year high, no doubt due to luxury flats being built as investments and then left unused. And what are our elected officials doing about this crisis? If they were doing fuck all that would be bad enough. The truth is most of them, Labour or Tory, are making things worse.
Next week will see Labour councillors joining the the Tory Housing Minister Brandon Lewis to suck up to property developers and estate agents at the London Real Estate Forum. The event is backed by the new Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and is being held in Mayfair – the multi-millionaire’s ghetto where the rich live in total isolation of the chaos they are creating in the lives of many Londoners. They will not be there to discuss growing homelessness, soaring rents or the demise of social housing. Instead they will be discussing how to further lines their pockets from the carnage. Every fucking vulture in the world has their eyes on London’s last remaining social housing estates. Deals will be done, the right people paid off, and our communities will be smashed up even further. It is vital that these parasites are opposed.
A day of protest against the event is emerging beginning with a morning demonstration outside at 8.30am. Then at 1pm Class War are calling for revenge with a mass noise protest outside the forum in Berkeley Square. If you want your kid to have somewhere to live when they grow up then be there. If you would like to be able to retire in the city you have lived in all your life be there. If you are worried your council home is under threat or are sick of paying eye-watering rents to private landlords, be there. If you just hate fucking toffs, be there. Advance to Mayfair. Bring the fucking noise. Spread the word – June 14, 1pm Berkeley Square.
This blog has no sources of funding so here’s a quick reminder that you can help ensure it continues by making a donation.
Join me on facebook or follow me on twitter @johnnyvoid
the void 
There should’ve been a class war in this dump of a country years ago!
Tory ass holes
moving out the peasants for the rich to buy whots left behind but even the builders have no quarms front door the rich backdoor the poor yep untill that day the peasants rise jeff3
Social cleansing does not exist. Ask the Government. We’re all in it together..
The collapse of social house building in London is rolling on without much of an ado !
Labour are occupied territory, have been for years.
How nice it is of the new mayor to actively be involved, Perhaps he has loads of “Sorry that your leaving the area” cards for all those tenants that voted him in.
(Off-Topic – But still very important)
PIP – An unmitigated disaster for the disabled.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/07/pip-disaster-disabled-access-report-benefits
I am not disabled, but always bear in mind I could become so, through illness or accident. at any time. The Govs policies on all welfare is – stop it. If we don’t produce, we should have nothing, not even the basics. No housing, if Gov can’t make money out of it for the their cronies. Seize the disabled’s cars. Let them fester and die, preferably out of sight.
dd -yes, exactly they are a bunch of totally heartless bastards – look after the rich and all of their very own ‘Etonian’ etc chums.
Anyone else – then fuck off – as far as they are concerned – the ‘lower classes’ and ‘the poor’ and the ‘sick and the disabed’ – they produce either ‘nothing’, or ‘not enough’ ‘to help the economy’.
Fuck the Government – they just do not care!
(Off Topic) A ‘useful’ extra tax (for them only!) being proposed by this disastrous Gov’t.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/07/price-of-diesel-fuel-could-rise-government-considers-reversing-tax-cuts
Reblogged this on sdbast.
Reblogged this on Citizens, not serfs.
And when there is next to nowhere for the poor folks to live, where do the richer folks expect to get their cleaners, and shop staff, etc, from. Or waiters, and bartenders and kitchen porters from, etc??? The Police and Firefighters are reasonably well paid, and they can afford to live outwith London if they have to, most having cars, or at least the money to commute into town. But the others don’t have the money for the transport costs. The Police and Fire support staff don’t get those kinds of pays. So…where are they all meant to come form, if they can no longer get a place in London? And the nurses for the hospitals? And the general council staffers who do the trash, and the parks, and so on? Where do the politicians expect them all to live?
As for Mayor Khan, while he may be better than Mayor Boris, he doesn’t sound he will be by much. He is already on record as saying he doesn’t approve a rents cap for his city. Was he really the best Labour could come up with? For if that is how he wishes to address the housing crisis there, he isn’t going to be much help. Whatever ideas he may have, it looks rather tame at the moment. he could surprise us, of course, but hardly looks like it at present And talking of firemen. Mayor Khan could do something useful for himself and all of London by re – opening the 10 fire houses Johnston closed. Or have the better ones all been turned into luxury pads by now?
East Euro’s living 3 to a room. Been telling you for ages.Do keep up old chap.
So you telling us that nurses, and hospital porters, etc, etc, and Fire and Police support staff should all be living 3 and 4 in a room, simply because folks from other lands are being forced to do that? I don’t think that is any acceptable option. Proper pay and half decent housing and rents is what we need. I a not really sure what you are getting at to be honest.
Populaces get the governments they deserve. You voted party politics all your lives and now are ‘shocked’ ?
Not much room in the hen house at the moment.
Reblogged this on Mark Catlin's Blog.
Haha there are still real Brits trying to live in London ?
Why do you think the East End Cockneys all fucked off…
do what everybody else did – Move out –
to get away from:
the worlds rich, criminal filth laundering money…
Humanitarianily illiterate, religious nutcase, 3rd world trash…
Useless HIV ridden camp faggots paedos from whose knows where…
snotty rich Brits living in their bubbles..
2nd world trash, living in cars and tents, and happy to drag workers rights back 100 years .
Fuck that shit-hole called London that was once until recently . a great city..
Social housing is a goldmine for greedy contractors. Lining their pockets constantly doing unnecessary work over and over again. All deals done on the golf course with scummy ‘housing associations’. There is always a way you can screw money out of the poor. No wonder their fucking rents are so high! Must be all those fucking drill bits!