The Green Party has launched its local election campaign in Bristol today with a pledge to support councils to massively increase their supply of affordable housing.
Co-leader Carla Denyer, who is standing as MP candidate in Bristol Central, said:
“This country faces an acute housing crisis. There are over a million households on council waiting lists . In England the average home for sale now costs more than 8 times the annual average household earnings .
“We desperately need a massive increase in the supply of affordable social housing. I hear regularly from people who have been living in unacceptable conditions, crying out for a secure home or struggling to make ends meet because their rents are through the roof.
“Councils have a vital role to play but they need a framework that supports them to provide the homes that people desperately need. We need to unlock the policies that will make hundreds of thousands of extra council homes available – for good. We also need a fair deal for the millions of people renting in the private sector.”
Among their policies the party says that it would provide funding to councils to meet their needs for affordable social housing and lift the overly restrictive rules on council borrowing for housebuilding – ensuring at least an extra 150,000 council homes a year are made available through a mix of new build, refurbishment, conversions and buying up existing homes
It would end the Right to Buy, enabling local authorities to keep council homes available and affordable in the community for good and would tame the private rental market through rent controls, in places where the rental market is overheated, to ensure a fair rent, as well as ending no-fault evictions.
The party said it would create a ‘community right to buy’, giving councils, housing associations and community housing groups first refusal to buy certain properties that come onto the market, including former social housing bought under Right to Buy; properties in need of energy efficiency improvements; or any property left empty for an unacceptably long time.
