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We need to break the status quo on housing
• I WAS pleased to read Councillor Lee Rowley’s letter (Snob? Everyone has a right to their own home, November 23).
Finally it seems someone is willing to express the views of many Westminster residents currently in social housing who aspire to home ownership. However, as well as the “estate communities” he refers to, a significant number of us housing association tenants who are denied the right to buy would welcome the opportunity to own the homes we live in; or, failing that, to receive a leg-up onto the housing ladder elsewhere in our communities. Our options currently are both unpalatable and limited to say the least. We are suffering the effects of sky-high property prices and a credit crunch on the one hand (that is, expensive mortgages imposed by nervous lending institutions) and government “incentives” for first-time buyers that simply fail to take account of the realities in the marketplace.
According to Hometrack, the housing data company, the income first-time buyers now need to get on the housing ladder has reached unprecedented levels. The average house in Britain now costs more than five times the average first-time buyer’s income; higher than at the peak of the last boom in 1990.
A typical family-sized two-bedroom flat in Westminster, at the low end of the scale, will cost in the region of £375,000, yet the best a Housing Corporation/resident lending (RSL) scheme such as Social HomeBuy can offer is a maximum discount of £16,000. Other schemes like Open Market HomeBuy impose a maximum household income threshold of £60,000. A couple perhaps just over the maximum, earning say £65-70,000 jointly, would be expected to find a home in London for £210,000.
The implication is clear: if you want to get onto the property ladder and need a bigger home for your family, the outer regions of the Thames Gateway beckon. As for RSLs such as Soho Housing, their development funding has been cut to the point where few new homes, if any, are being developed and offered to tenants seeking transfers.
Politicians talk of the need for creating sustainable communities, yet during my 40 years in Soho almost all of my peers have left the area to pursue their desire for home ownership and improved quality of life. To paraphrase Cllr. Rowley, there is a desperate need to ask questions of our policy-makers and challenge the status quo.
ALF TABODA
Great Pulteney Street, W1
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