London mayor Sadiq Khan has announced a programme that will fund councils to purchase homes from the private market.
Mr Khan aims for boroughs to buy 10,000 new homes over the next decade, including through his new council homes acquisition programme, which will see boroughs bid for funding.
City Hall said the programme would help boroughs respond to the capital’s urgent need for social housing and temporary accommodation amid a ‘ballooning homelessness crisis’.
More than 170,000 Londoners are living in insecure temporary accommodation, putting a huge strain on stretched council finances, the mayor’s office said.
City Hall said it acknowledged that the long-term solution to these issues is the creation of new council homes, and said Mr Khan was doing ‘everything in his power’ to help councils build homes.
The director of policy and public affairs at The Housing Forum, Anna Clarke, said she was ‘genuinely conflicted’ about the policy.
She said it is quicker – and in the current climate, cheaper – to buy existing homes than build new ones.
However, she said she was concerned that funding was being diverted from the mayor’s Affordable Homes Programme, which is normally used to subsidise housebuilding.
Ms Clarke said: ‘Diverting grant funding away from newbuild risks reducing the number of new homes built. And we need to build new homes at scale if we’re really to solve the housing shortage in London.’
