A new and depressing landmark has been reached in the madness that is Islington’s housing market.
Last year, local Green campaigner Caroline Allen wrote in the Islington Tribune (27th July 2012) about how so called ‘affordable’ homes that cost £500,000 were nothing more than a con; designed to allow developers to continue to profit from our borough’s housing shortage, while many people live in unacceptable conditions and severe overcrowding.
Unfortunately this situation just gets worse and this example has now been well and truly trumped by the £720,000 ‘affordable’ home in Pear Tree Street, Clerkenwell. Advertised on sharetobuy.com – which describes itself as ‘making housing affordable – the property has an estimated total monthly cost of £2,444 which includes: rent of £1,125, a service charge of £320, and a mortgage of £999 on the quarter share purchased.
Affordable usually means costing no more than 35% of take-home pay. If this were a couple splitting the costs they would still need to be earning £60,000 each to cover the cost. And yet the advert says household income must be below £66,000, meaning that this flat is very far from affordable.
It is really worrying that people who can only afford a £180,000 share are being tied in to these very high fees because they can’t afford to access the market in other ways, where they are likely to get a better deal overall.
These examples show not only how the whole idea of ‘affordable housing’ has become a massive con under Mayor Boris Johnson, but are also an illustration that Islington is not getting the sort of homes it desperately needs, in spite of the claims of the council regarding home building. In the case of the Loxfords they did not even force the developers to meet the full 50% requirement for even these ‘affordable’ homes.
Green Party Assembly Member, Darren Johnson, in his recent report in to housing in London ‘Crumbs for Londoners’, showed how two thirds of new properties being build are sold for investment and a third go to overseas investors, leaving most Londoners with little choice but a lifetime of insecure renting. As a result housing wealth is trickling into a smaller number of hands, including people who leave the homes they buy empty.
The reports also found that homes are unnecessarily demolished to make way for new luxury flats, pushing low income Londoners out. Residents are trampled on, rather than being empowered. The Mayor says he wants very little affordable housing built, which is leading to a severe social housing shortage.
Greens are calling on the Mayor to champion social housing, introduce stabilising rent controls and controls on investors to tip the scales in favour of residents. In addition the Council needs to ensure its planning policies are promoting the sort of housing Islington needs and not pandering to developers as we have previously seen.