Lewisham wins £37.7m “from Sadiq Khan” for new homes

[anon51837532]

Is this new news ?

Council wins £37.7m from City Hall to build 384 new homes

The new homes will form part of the council’s commitment to build 1000 new social homes by 2022.

This is on top of the 500 new council homes Lewisham Council promised by 2018 – with 500 homes either complete, in the planning process or being built.

[anon5422159]

This money actually comes from the central government’s multi-billion-pound cash injection for affordable and social housing:

£2 billion boost for affordable housing and long term deal for social rent

The government’s Affordable Homes Programme will increase from £7.1 billion of public funding to £9.1 billion, and the £2 billion additional funding for affordable housing could lever in total investment by housing associations and councils of up to £5 billion.

Since April 2010, around 333,000 affordable homes have been delivered, including 240,000 for rent. More than twice as much council housing has been built since 2010 than in the previous 13 years.

Predictably, Labour councils and NewsShopper (with its anti-Tory editor Simon Bull) neglect to mention this today.

Khan did, however, mention the Tories’ record-breaking investment back in 2016:

Sadiq Khan (SadiqKhan)

Sadiq Khan hails £3.15bn fund for houses in London

[Forethugel]

Great news, but what I find shocking is the last sentence of the article - 2000 homeless families(!) in Lewisham alone, and that’s only counting those in temporary accommodation! Wow - just wow…

[anon5422159]

I’d be cautious about the definition of “homeless” here - it can be used to describe families in Assured Shorthold Tenancies. Families living in rental property aren’t really homeless IMHO.

[Hollow]

The definition of “homeless” in the UK is absurd. Its anyone who is in temporary accommodation / waiting list. Actual people sleeping on the streets is 10,000 for the whole country.

[Anotherjohn]

Just to define ‘Assured Shorthold Tenancy’ for many people who wouldn’t know -

An AST is the legal standard form of letting agreement for all houses and flats, which, whilst it is for a minimum certain term of 6 months, many of my tenants have been with me for over 10 years (and counting!).

So, as @anon5422159 and others have commented, to define these people as ‘homeless’ is misleading and headline-grabbing nonsense.

[Forethugel]

Thank you. Just to understand this correctly, if this AST is the standard form of letting agreement, does this imply that only 2000 families in Lewisham are renting on that basis? Surely that can’t be correct either so I wonder where the number comes from.

[Anotherjohn]

I’m afraid I don’t know about that particular statistic. My post was more to do with the definition of ‘homeless’ in dialogue between @anon5422159 and Shelter.

[HOPcrossbun]

Agree that it can’t be right that all those who are renters (i.e. on AST) are classified as “homeless”. So people on this forum should stop using this to undermine the fact that there is a huge problem of homelessness in Lewisham.