A new approach to help first-time home buyers

How many young people today would like to buy a home but are hopelessly priced out?

As Mayor, Boris Johnson has tried to champion first time home buyers but he hasn’t really made much difference.

It’s time he made a radical switch to co-operative home ownership.
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Both Labour and Conservatives are failing on housing

I was shocked when I found that eight years of Ken as Mayor and ten years of the current government saw the housing waiting lists double and house prices spiral out of control.

But with Boris now in office and cuts to the budget threatening to wipe out the affordable housing programmes, this bleak story looks set to get even worse.

In my recent report, Coming home to roost, I showed how the policies of two Mayors of London have failed to deliver secure, safe, comfortable housing.

In London, social housing waiting lists have grown by 82% as the stock of homes actually decreased. Right to Buy continued unabated until very recently, with 85,000 homes off the stocks. In the same decade, we only managed to build around 55,000 new homes.

There are now over 330,000 households waiting to be allocated a place that suits their needs – that’s roughly 10% of all the households in the city.
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