Why shared ownership IS NOT affordable housing
Thanks to a blog reader for pointing me in the direction of this advert on the Notting Hill Housing Trust website - which undelines the absolute lunacy of classifying shared ownership as "affordable" housing:
Shared ownership is a scheme that's supposed to help people on broadly average earnings to get themselves on the housing ladder. It's a great scheme that works well in parts of the country with average house prices, but here in South West London, the market value of a shared ownership property means that even a 25% stake is out of reach for anyone on anything like average earnings - even for London.
£100,000 is NOT an average earning; only something like 350,000 people earn £100,000 or more in the entire country. And I find it troubling that housing association is involved in marketing these sort of properties - not because there's anything wrong with earning that much money, but because that's simply not what housing associations were set up to do, which was to provide affordable housing for those on low and average earnings. Providing subsidised homes for the affluent appears to be what Notting Hill is now devoting its efforts to - and it's wrong.
Now Earls Court isn't Wandsworth, but there are plenty of similar schemes dotted around Putney and Wandsworth - Notting Hill, for example, manages the shared ownership section of Putney Wharf and the Riverside Quarter.
The Conservatives here in Wandsworth have got away with claiming that they're building affordable homes by permitting an insufficient fraction of new developments to be "shared ownership". Well, here's the proof - shared ownership is not affordable housing in this part of the world.
The only way to guarantee that those on anything like average earnings in Putney and Wandsworth - the people who teach our children, police our streets, nurse us when we're ill, put out our fires, and clean our streets among others - is to start focussing on affordable homes to rent, and to end the Tory stigma that there's anything wrong with renting a decent home.
Shared ownership is a scheme that's supposed to help people on broadly average earnings to get themselves on the housing ladder. It's a great scheme that works well in parts of the country with average house prices, but here in South West London, the market value of a shared ownership property means that even a 25% stake is out of reach for anyone on anything like average earnings - even for London.
£100,000 is NOT an average earning; only something like 350,000 people earn £100,000 or more in the entire country. And I find it troubling that housing association is involved in marketing these sort of properties - not because there's anything wrong with earning that much money, but because that's simply not what housing associations were set up to do, which was to provide affordable housing for those on low and average earnings. Providing subsidised homes for the affluent appears to be what Notting Hill is now devoting its efforts to - and it's wrong.
Now Earls Court isn't Wandsworth, but there are plenty of similar schemes dotted around Putney and Wandsworth - Notting Hill, for example, manages the shared ownership section of Putney Wharf and the Riverside Quarter.
The Conservatives here in Wandsworth have got away with claiming that they're building affordable homes by permitting an insufficient fraction of new developments to be "shared ownership". Well, here's the proof - shared ownership is not affordable housing in this part of the world.
The only way to guarantee that those on anything like average earnings in Putney and Wandsworth - the people who teach our children, police our streets, nurse us when we're ill, put out our fires, and clean our streets among others - is to start focussing on affordable homes to rent, and to end the Tory stigma that there's anything wrong with renting a decent home.
Labels: housing
posted by Stuart King at
14:51
<< Home