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The resolution that Gordon has got to keep
HAPPY New Year Gordon Brown. But, just a word of warning, millions of needy families are pinning their hopes on you not breaking your resolutions on an issue that will not go away.
The Prime Minister has uttered many encouraging words on social housing since he took control last year – a clear shift in emphasis.
“I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this,” he seemed to be saying when he first moved next door at Downing Street.
And housing campaigners, starved during the famine years under Tony Blair, were positively salivating at Brown’s dramatic new focus on building homes for the disadvantaged. But since then… well, his bold ideas for housing the less well off seem to have hit the doldrums.
For example, there didn’t seem to be much interest in building social housing when the chance arose behind British Library last year. Far better use the site for a prestigious world-class medical research centre, Brown obviously thought.
And whatever happened after that unmistakable hint that Camden’s council tenants, with their long-neglected plea for investment in their homes, would finally be helped by a Brown government? They’re still waiting.
Then there were Brown’s visionary plans to rope in developers to build him new affordable housing across the country. You know, the ones celebrated by cabinet ministers where we won’t be able to tell which side of the road is a social rented block and which is a privately owned.
The hundreds of thousands of promised homes are yet to be even sketched out and there are storm clouds ahead. Economists are warning that trying to kick start a major home-building programme in the middle of a recession is like trying to navigate the seas in a hurricane.
If the credit crunch starts to bite – and forecasters are saying it is a matter of when rather than if – it will be the worst possible time to try and convince property developers that what they should be investing in is blocks of social housing.
There will no doubt be government laurels and perhaps some prizes on offer for the best estates but to the top home-builders, private developments will be always be where the biggest margins for profit are. There is surely a risk that when Brown calls, they simply won’t answer the phone.
Chancellor for a decade, trusted with the country’s finances, the time is now ripe for Gordon Brown to act upon those promises on council and social housing.
For millions, future happy new years depend on him doing so.
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