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A simple, practical plan to do what can be done
Rowan Moore20.11.08
Boris Johnson's housing strategy is in the style we have come to expect from his mayoralty: practical, undogmatic, avoiding the grand gesture, hard to disagree with. Livingstone's target of achieving 50 per cent affordable homes on new housing is finally laid to rest. Rarely achieved, in the current climate it would have become 50 per cent of nothing.
In its place the Mayor offers his 50,000 new affordable homes over three years, a target made possible only by the impressive-sounding £5billion of government money he will get through the new Homes and Communities Agency. This won't fix all of London's housing needs, but it's better than nothing.
He is also trying to make it go further with a broad definition of "affordable" to include assisted ownership, and by bringing existing empty homes into use. The old idea of affordable housing - a specially built council flat with a very low rent - has become blurred. Even many higher-rate income tax payers will be eligible for some sort of help with housing.
His promise of a wider range of sizes and types of home is welcome, after the glut of one- and two-bed flats of recent years. It is also hard to argue against his call for "more beautiful design in new homes", even if the detail on achieving this is yet to come. The last few years have seen some of the most miserable new homes built since the legendary horrors of the Sixties.
His enthusiasm for space standards - minimum dimensions for rooms and flats - has slipped away, though it may come back in the Housing Design Guide we are promised later.
In places the language is touchy-feely, larded with words like "diverse" and "vibrant" and mushy phrases like "most appropriate mix", to an extent that Johnson the columnist might once have satirised. There is also a stress on participation and consultation to a degree that may eventually impede his targets. If he is to get his 50,000 he may sometimes have to instruct boroughs where they're going to go.
The most utopian moment comes when he says "rough sleeping should end by 2012". Rough sleepers, like poverty and prostitution, are surely always with us. Otherwise it's a case of doing what can be done and making the best of it. At this level the strategy is hard to fault.
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New homes should go to families or couples about to start a family rather than single people who happen to work for the public sector. I'm not sure how the ten thousand new but very small 1-bed flats in London have helped London families or improve social mobility.
In Hammersmith one problem was making people aware that they qualified for these schemes. Only 3,000 people applied for shared ownership in a borough where 70,000 people live in rented accommodation.
- Mark, Hammersmith
