propertytalk Live! - Higher affordable rents not enough on their own

propertytalk Live! - Higher affordable rents not enough on their own

Affordable rents at 80% of market levels are not a silver bullet and will not alone ensure the Government’s plans for 150,000 new affordable homes are delivered.

According to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and L&Q, ‘Hard times, more choices’, suggests that producing 150,000 new affordable homes in four years with current public expenditure constraints and in a slowly recovering economy presents daunting challenges.

It argues that higher affordable rents are part of a broader overall funding package needed to deliver the Government’s housing plans.*

Other crucial elements of the package include:

- allowing housing associations more operational and financial flexibilities in managing their assets to generate extra income and borrowing capacity;
- close partnership working between housing associations and local authorities, using the additional freedoms presented by localism;
- continued judicious use of government housing grants to ensure the right homes are provided in all housing markets across the country;
- maintaining the confidence of financial investors in housing associations by getting regulation and welfare benefit reform right;
- swift planning reform to ensure local authorities can build local consensus for housing development and ‘in kind’ planning gains from private developers can help support new affordable home building.