{"id":75018,"date":"2017-12-21T02:27:32","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T19:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/britains-broken-housing-market-needs-radical-solutions-letters\/"},"modified":"2017-12-21T03:07:26","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T20:07:26","slug":"britains-broken-housing-market-needs-radical-solutions-letters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/britains-broken-housing-market-needs-radical-solutions-letters\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s broken housing market needs radical solutions | Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nThere is no political will to deal with the UK\u2019s housing problems, says Michael Miller. Developers are not part of the solution but part of the problem, writes Keith Howells. Plus letters from Jeremy Beecham, John Rigby, Martin Jeffree and David SimpsonAs your report points out, this housing crisis has been obvious for some time, is getting worse and has been largely caused by deliberate political decisions (\u2018Ordinary\u2019 working families are falling into homelessness trap, 15 December). But many steps could be taken to increase the supply of affordable housing. Here are some: reduce or remove the right-to-buy discount for council houses, increase the term before they can be sold on, and sell them with covenants that prevent their being sold as buy-to-let properties; proceeds of council house sales should go back to councils, which should be allowed to borrow to build replacements; do not introduce right to buy for housing association stock (it damages their economic viability); insist that all privately rented housing is licensed and inspected for habitation fitness; lengthen the term of ensured tenancy; introduce rent controls; more controversially, capital gains higher than a certain percentage on house sales could be taxed and the proceeds used to fund social housing.If the government truly wished to deal with the housing crisis and its wider social and economic damage \u2013 it curbs social mobility for one \u2013 they could take steps to do so. But I\u2019m sure they have neither the inclination nor the imagination to do it, largely because it would show up the folly of their neoliberal ideology.Michael MillerSheffield Continue reading…
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\nSource : theguardian.com
\nRead more…Britain\u2019s broken housing market needs radical solutions | Letters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is no political will to deal with the UK\u2019s housing problems, says Michael Miller....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-property-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75ss1-jvY","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":114491,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/the-acute-social-housing-crisis-and-what-scotland-can-teach-us-letters\/","url_meta":{"origin":75018,"position":0},"title":"The acute social housing crisis and what Scotland can teach us | Letters","date":"February 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"\r The sale of public land to private developers must be stopped, says Rev Paul Nicolson, while Kate Macintosh says the problem is not a lack of housing but affordabilitySuzanne Moore got everything else right about the housing crisis but left out land (I\u2019m on the housing ladder but I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":170236,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/seeing-red-over-the-greens-advocacy-of-buy-the-supply-housing-policy-letters\/","url_meta":{"origin":75018,"position":1},"title":"Seeing red over the Greens\u2019 advocacy of \u2018buy the supply\u2019 housing policy | Letters","date":"January 23, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Bella Sankey responds to a letter from Si\u00e2n Berry and urges her to pay more attention closer to home I was surprised to see Si\u00e2n Berry (Letters, 9 January) advocate that Labour \u201cbuy the supply\u201d of landlord homes as a way of increasing the stock of social housing. Si\u00e2n\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":164181,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/why-labour-lacks-credibility-when-it-comes-to-housing-letters\/","url_meta":{"origin":75018,"position":2},"title":"Why Labour lacks credibility when it comes to housing | Letters","date":"November 7, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Kate Macintosh calls for a cessation of right to buy and highlights hypocrisy within the governmentPhil Tate (Letters, 30 October) calls for the ramping up of the supply of social housing to reduce the housing benefit bill. Housing benefit represents a constant leakage of public finances into the pockets\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50688,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/decent-housing-a-necessity-for-a-healthy-society-letters\/","url_meta":{"origin":75018,"position":3},"title":"Decent housing a necessity for a healthy society | Letters","date":"April 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"\r \u201cThere is a lack of political will to fix our broken housing market,\u201d says your leader (28 March). In fact, there is political will not to fix it, because to offer any degree of stability to today\u2019s nascent and growing families would need more than \u201cflatlining\u201d house prices; it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":169289,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/labour-should-buy-the-supply-of-housing-from-landlords-letters\/","url_meta":{"origin":75018,"position":4},"title":"Labour should \u2018buy the supply\u2019 of housing from landlords | Letters","date":"January 9, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Si\u00e2n Berry MP responds to the news that landlords claim they are being pushed out of the market. Plus a letter from Benjamin McKechnieMy heart obviously breaks for distressed buy-to-let landlords (Are UK buy-to-let landlords dying out \u2013 and should we care?, 5 January) but, if some landlords are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":22572,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/right-to-buy-reform-urged-as-council-leaders-fear-for-social-housing\/","url_meta":{"origin":75018,"position":5},"title":"Right to buy reform urged as council leaders fear for social housing","date":"August 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Figures show that replacements for homes sold under the right to buy scheme fell by 27% last year, worsening the housing crisisCouncil leaders in England have called on the government to make urgent reforms to the right to buy scheme, after figures showed that the number of sold-off homes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}