The Week in Housing: mayoral candidates scrap over housing policy as homelessness figures continue to break records

Good afternoon.

Inside Housing has been taking a keen interest of late in the role of regional and metro mayors and their role in tackling the housing crisis.

High-profile incumbent mayor Andy Street and his main rival have been tussling over who will build the most homes for social rent.

Mr Street explained how the West Midlands devolution deal, which secured for the first-time access to money under the government’s Affordable Housing Programme, will help deliver more social housing across the region.

Trying to unseat Mr Street is Richard Parker. His manifesto promise is to build 2,000 social rent homes a year by 2028 (300 more than Mr Street’s pledge of 1,700). He said this will add up to 20,000 in total by the end of the decade.

In London, Sadiq Khan made a number of other pledges in the run-up to the election on Thursday. These included plans to build 40,000 council homes in London, end rough sleeping by 2030 and deliver 6,000 new rental homes across the capital, in which rents are capped based on local salaries.

He also pledged to use new ‘Land Assembly Zones’ to designate new areas where housing density can be increased, backed up by compulsory purchase powers where needed.

Mr Khan did come under some criticism this week from leasehold campaigners who pointed out that he had failed to deliver his last election pledge to introduce a commonhold pilot scheme on Greater London Authority-owned land. 

In response, he defended his commitment to reforming leasehold if re-elected as mayor.

Campaigners also set up a ‘tent city’ outside London’s City Hall to demand that mayoral candidates commit to social housing investment.

With votes still being counted and regardless of who wins, it would be at best absurd, or at worst delusional, if the housing crisis was not the first thing on every new or incumbent politician’s to-do list.

Some mayoral candidates do seem oblivious to the scale of what is going on. They need to look no further than the record-breaking figures for both homeless households and children living in temporary accommodation.

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