House And Home

Jeremy Corbyn's and John Healey's proposals to tackle the housing crisis are good as far as they go. But they do not go far enough.

We need the Land Value Tax. With the Universal Basic Income. Set within Modern Monetary Theory, so that the Jobs Guarantee guaranteed the bargaining power of trade unions.

We need a minimum of 100,000 new homes every year for at least 10 years, including council homes, with an end to the Right to Buy, with the capital receipts from council house sales released in order to build more council housing, and with councils empowered to borrow to that end.

We need a minimum of 50 per cent of any new development to be dedicated to affordable housing, with affordability defined as 50 per cent of average rents, with rent controls, and with action against the buying up of property by foreign investors in order to leave it empty.

And we need a statutory requirement of planning permission for change of use if it were proposed to turn a primary dwelling into a secondary dwelling, a working family home into a weekend or holiday home.

You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.