UK politicians aren't fixing empty homes crisis: The Guardian
UK politicians lack the will to to solve the country's social housing crisis, reported Polly Toynbee in The Guardian. She called on the government to freeze the housing market by preventing prices rising beyond inflation levels and lift council tax band caps, as well as imposing a capital gains tax on homes whose value rises faster than inflation. Toynbee also cited a Canadian policy of imposing a 1% value-based tax on properties vacant for more than six months, which could reduce the number of empty homes around the country.

Empty property bought by investors to sit unused is a scandal the Guardian has exposed this week, finding 1,652 in the Grenfell borough of Kensington and Chelsea alone.

Not long ago I interviewed a long-time upmarket estate agent in Knightsbridge, opposite Harrods, who told me she begged foreign buyers to agree to rent out their vacant properties, to no avail. They always refuse. She describes the change she has seen in those streets over recent years, as they turn dark at night, no lights on, with so many mothballed houses sitting there as gold bullion in the bank, not homes for anyone. The area is dying, she says, warning that all the reasons that made it desirable will be lost. John Healey, Labour shadow housing minister, says there are some 200,000 long-term vacant properties, including “those bought and left empty by speculative investors,” in the wealthiest areas.

What happens at the top end of the market knocks on all down the chain – and what’s happening at the bottom is a disaster. Report after report chronicles the downward plunge. Last week the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported on an alarming acceleration in evictions, mostly from the burgeoning private rented sector, two-thirds in London. The average age of private renters’ “head of household” is now 40, and 36% of private renters have children who live insecure lives, frequently moved out and away from their schools. Over a quarter are in officially substandard conditions, yet spend an ever higher proportion of their low incomes on rent – in London 45%.

The local government association reports 120,000 families in temporary accommodation, a three-fold increase since 2014, rising at the rate of one secondary school per month. Councils with a statutory duty to house the homeless face heavy losses: Inside Housing found that Brent loses £178 a week for each family in a B&B. That’s no surprise, as the Osborne/Duncan Smith housing benefit cuts, cap and freeze mean state support no longer covers the rent. Far worse is about to strike as the yet harsher universal credit is rolled out, with more waves of evictions anticipated.

All this we know. The housing crisis reaches up into middle-income families and well above, as children can no longer afford to buy what their parents took for granted in their youth. Since 2010 there are nearly a million fewer home-owning households. At last it may be becoming a hot political issue: Labour’s manifesto plans were popular, promising 100,000 new social homes a year, minimum three-year private tenancies and rents capped to rise by no more than inflation. Labour would rightly suspend the right-to-buy disaster that has turned a third of flats in council estates into expensive private rentals.

By the next election, Labour needs to raise housing to the top of the agenda, with a real sense of national emergency. But with 64% of households secure home-owners, and 80% of the high-voting, Tory-leaning retired owning their own homes, that’s a hard task. There is no mystery about housing, no insoluble problem. All that’s required, as with most of Britain’s great social dysfunctions, is the political will to do something about it. Consider Harold Macmillan building 350,000 council homes a year – yes, council housing – and Labour’s 100,000 seems modest.

Above all, every effort should be made to freeze the housing market, and the intention announced to stop prices rising by more than inflation. Government has plenty of levers: lift the cap on council tax bands, so property pays today’s rate, not one last set in 1991. Declare that any future rise in property values above inflation will accrue capital gains tax: there is no good reason for people’s homes to swell in untaxed value. If the market were chilled, over time housing would stop being used as a nest egg, or gold bullion, and become just another commodity, like food, where buying or renting would become neutral choices.

Every effort should be made to freeze the housing market and stop prices rising by more than inflation

The Guardian today analyses how other countries are choking off the buy-to-leave luxury vacant property disease: Vancouver charges 1% of the value every year for any property left empty for six months, sending owners “scrambling to rent”. Councils could be set free to impose whatever extra tax they choose on empty property, so long as it is loudly earmarked for building more housing for others. There would be a Daily Mail stink raised about any new taxes on an “Englishman’s castle”, especially on people’s own homes, but also on second homes. All second home-owners, my family included, should be prepared to pay high enough local taxes to contribute to housing others.

The great question is whether this profoundly unequal, often ungenerous-minded country can change itself into something better. Do we have the politicians with the moral heft and the persuasive skills to convince enough voters that those, especially of my generation, who have accumulated unimaginable unearned wealth just by buying a house cheaply when we were young, should be willing to help redistribute it not just within our own families, but among those whose families never shared in this undeserved property bonanza? If not, the wealth and property gap will go on widening and Britain will be an ever worse place to live.