Today the Liberal Democrats are launching our new policies on Housing.
Most people want to own their own home.
Home ownership gives people, especially families, stability.
Everybody wants to live in a community that is clean and safe.
Liberal Democrat policy will help these aspirations to become a reality, for everyone.
The Liberal Democrats plan to make affordable housing a priority, investing in new homes and new ways for people to own those homes.
The policy paper we are launching today has a range of proposals from tackling the difficulties in the rentals market to identifying new land on which to build and tackling the skill shortages in the building industry.
We have a simple ambition: a decent home for everyone at a price within their means – but we will not over look the needs of those who rent and wish to continue to do so.
But I would like to concentrate on one particular area - making it easier for people to own their own homes.
Getting on the housing ladder has never been more difficult.
In some communities high house prices and lack of affordable housing stock have become an acute crisis.
Many people simply cannot afford a home in the area where they were brought up, or near their jobs.
Employers from private companies to hospitals, schools and police forces are finding it difficult to recruit staff because those staff just can’t afford a place to live.
Young people are having to wait two years longer to afford a house than when this government came to power.
And in a few years, many young people will have tens of thousands of pounds worth of student debt to contend with.
That will make it even harder to put together the £25,000 deposit first time buyers are now having to invest in their first home.
The Government have been slow to act.
Housebuilding has fallen to record lows.
Labour has chosen to subsidise the lucky few – a few key workers, or a few council tenants – without doing anything to address the underlying problems we all face.
Our innovation is to create a completely new housing market to help people make the transition from renting to buying.
Mutual Homes.
Mutual homes will offer people the opportunity to build up an equity stake in a home gradually, investing only as much as they can afford.
We plan to launch this new type of ownership with 100,000 starter homes for young people and families.
Rather than buying the home outright, people would buy shares in a mutual home ownership trust that owned their home.
The householder’s rent payments work as their first step on the property ladder, accruing shares in the trust that owns the development.
That’s so much better than watching rent payments disappear every month, with nothing to show for them.
When they want to move, a householder can sell their shares to another tenant, or back to the mutual, and use the proceeds to help buy a home on the open market.
The homes are affordable because they will be built on surplus public sector land, donated by central or local government, so the householder pays only for the cost of building, not the land.
It’s an innovative proposal.
But we know it is deliverable.
Mutual homes have worked in countries across the world, from Denmark to the US.
The reason they work is that the subsidy – the government land – is recycled.
It is permanently excluded from the cost of the home, so every generation of first time buyers will be able to use the mutual homes as a stepping stone into the housing market.
Every area has its own housing needs.
So we are proposing a menu of policies and options to help each local community meet those needs.
Ed Davey is here to speak about some of the other polices his team has developed.
Decent homes, decent communities, and the opportunity to own your own home.
Liberal Democrat housing policy aims to make these aspirations a reality.
ENDS
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