New house price statistics show Tories have failed to help younger people get a good start in life - John Healey

John Healey MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, commenting on new house price statistics, said:

“The number of home-owners under 45 has fallen by over 900,000 since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.

“The Tories have spent seven years talking about home-ownership but they have failed to help younger people on ordinary incomes get a good start in life and failed to build the new homes our country needs. The number of new low-cost homes to buy has halved since 2010.

“Labour will give young working people fresh hope of owning their own home by building more affordable housing for first-time buyers, cutting stamp duty, and giving local people first-dibs on new homes built in their area.”

in other news water is wet

#but really it’s not just that #we can’t afford to *RENT* a small flat on our own#it’s about wages not going up #it’s about bullshit austerity measures#it’s about there not being enough jobs#and the ones there are have unrealistic expectations#entry level job ads requiring two years experience is ridiculous#but that’s what they all are #there’s so much more to it #but yeah#fuck the tories

Agreed with all of this. 

And also to add to this: giving local people first-dibs on new homes built in their area is all well and good but IT HAS to reflect the average of local people’s wages - otherwise local people will still not be able to buy in their local area, and the whole concept will just be empty promises. 

There is a serious gentrification problem in the UK at the moment, particularly in the cities and suburbs of cities. There are entire blocks of supposedly partly “affordable” housing that are just sold overseas to investors, because the local people don’t have the money to buy them (or even rent them!). 

You just have these ghost towns of empty “sold” properties with nobody living in them because no one can afford them except the rich. And the rich don’t use houses as houses - they sit on them and use them as investments. Completely defeating the point of what houses are meant for.  

There needs to be more restrictions put in place when it comes to the rich “investing” in properties. Because the way things are headed, we’re heading straight back to Victorian times where the rich had their big expansive estates, and the poor were forced onto the streets or into really cramped unhygienic and unsafe conditions. 

And then the rich complain because the streets are full of homeless people - hmmm, I wonder how that happened? It couldn’t have anything to do with the lack of housing affordable for the poor and working class, could it? It couldn’t have anything to do with austerity or the wages not going up to reflect inflation, or anything at all like that. 

We are heading straight back to the Victorian era, if we haven’t arrived there already. 

As a working class person, I know my chances of being able to even RENT a property on my own and afford it, is no more than a dream. Let alone owning a property. Buying a house has become something only the rich or the very very lucky can afford…it’s pretty bleak. 

Houses should be considered as a human necessity to survive and a human right, just like food and clean drinking water and healthcare, not a luxury that only the rich can afford. 

Instead of letting greedy people who already have a house they can live in, buy their second, third, fourth, fifth, tenth home…we should really be focusing on giving those homes to people who don’t even have a first home or a roof over their heads that they can afford. Because otherwise the housing problem will only get worse.