We need public records on the delivery of social housing | Letter
Source: Guardian Housing ↗
Letter: Marco Scalvini on why it’s necessary to know what was promised by developers and local authorities, what arrived and what it costs to live in social housing Your editorial on London’s social housing ( 16 August ) makes a persuasive case for treating social housing as economic infrastructure. However, infrastructure is normally monitored and social housing is not, either when it is delivered or across the years in which it is meant to remain affordable. A home is counted as affordable on the day that planning permission is granted and is rarely examined again, through completion, tenure change and the service charges that can make it unaffordable within months of occupation, as your reporting on shared ownership has shown . Southwark, like almost every local authority, publishes every pound of the financial contributions developers pay, yet offers no scheme-level account of whether the promised social rented homes were built.
The consequences showed at Elephant and Castle, where residents needed three years of freedom of information battles to force out the viability evidence behind an affordable housing commitment that ended at 82 social rented homes in place of more than a thousand. By the time it came out, the estate was gone, and a record that arrives after demolition can only count the losses. On the Old Kent Road, where the council plans around 20,000 new homes and only a few thousand are yet built or under way , the record could still be kept in time to shape what is delivered. You close with Nye Bevan’s idea of housing as an essential service like the NHS, and the comparison is instructive.
The NHS publishes waiting lists and inspection results, and is held to them, whereas housing has no equivalent, whoever the landlord is. If social homes are economic infrastructure, they deserve public, dated records of what was promised, what arrived and what it costs to live in them.
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🌍 Effects for your country
The U.S.'s central bank rate currently stands at 3.75%, so a global rates move like this could feed through to local borrowing costs. The U.S.'s economy is growing at 2.3% with inflation at 3.2%, the backdrop this story's effects play out against locally. Housing-market effects like this are usually felt most where mortgage rates track the U.S.'s own central bank rate closely. With the U.S.'s unemployment at 4.4%, personal-finance effects like this land on a labour market that is currently fairly stable. Health-system effects are harder to localise from economic indicators alone — the real impact in the U.S. depends more on local healthcare capacity than the figures above.
The UK's central bank rate currently stands at 3.75%, so a global rates move like this could feed through to local borrowing costs. The UK's economy is growing at 0.8% with inflation at 3.2%, the backdrop this story's effects play out against locally. Housing-market effects like this are usually felt most where mortgage rates track the UK's own central bank rate closely. With the UK's unemployment at 5.6%, personal-finance effects like this land on a labour market that is currently fairly stable. Health-system effects are harder to localise from economic indicators alone — the real impact in the UK depends more on local healthcare capacity than the figures above.
France's central bank rate currently stands at 2%, so a global rates move like this could feed through to local borrowing costs. France's economy is growing at 0.9% with inflation at 1.8%, the backdrop this story's effects play out against locally. Housing-market effects like this are usually felt most where mortgage rates track France's own central bank rate closely. With France's unemployment at 7.9%, personal-finance effects like this land on a labour market that is already under strain. Health-system effects are harder to localise from economic indicators alone — the real impact in France depends more on local healthcare capacity than the figures above.
Romania's central bank rate currently stands at 6.5%, so a global rates move like this could feed through to local borrowing costs. Romania's economy is growing at 0.7% with inflation at 7.8%, the backdrop this story's effects play out against locally. Housing-market effects like this are usually felt most where mortgage rates track Romania's own central bank rate closely. With Romania's unemployment at 6%, personal-finance effects like this land on a labour market that is currently fairly stable. Health-system effects are harder to localise from economic indicators alone — the real impact in Romania depends more on local healthcare capacity than the figures above.
The UAE's central bank rate currently stands at 3.65%, so a global rates move like this could feed through to local borrowing costs. The UAE's economy is growing at 3.1% with inflation at 2.5%, the backdrop this story's effects play out against locally. Housing-market effects like this are usually felt most where mortgage rates track the UAE's own central bank rate closely. Health-system effects are harder to localise from economic indicators alone — the real impact in the UAE depends more on local healthcare capacity than the figures above.