Conference notes:

Britain’s housing crisis denies millions of people their right to rent or buy a decent home. This failure of government has left families in cramped, poor quality, squalid homes.  Council budgets are squeezed to the bone, three generations finding themselves permanently living in council funded ‘temporary accommodation’, diverting resources and putting pressure on local government, now barely able to perform their statutory duties.  Thirteen years of Conservatism has priced a whole generation out of the housing market.  House building needs time and ambitious investment.

Conference believes:

Austerity has broken existing housing models and the next Labour government must attack this crisis innovatively and on many fronts, improving the quality of housing and the supply of housing at the same time.  Conference recognises that many people became ‘accidental’ landlords and are now facing higher than affordable mortgages and passing  these costs onto tenants whose dreams of home ownership and security are extinguished as housing stock erodes.  Second home landlords facing large capital gains taxes bills as a consequence of skyrocketing prices could be incentivised to sell sooner to free up much needed existing stock.

Conference resolves:

• That the Labour Party review capital gains tax breaks to incentivise landlords of one and two bedroom homes to sell up.
• Remove the right to buy.
• Reintroduce rent controls.
• Empower councils to tax and regulate AirBnB and second holiday homes.
• Disincentivise the purchase and mothballing of off-plan property purchase by foreign investors.
• Reintroducing targets for building social housing.

Ends

245 words