Why should communities take on the responsibility of building homes? Why not leave it to the commercial developers? Certainly, numerous governments have promised to build more affordable housing and often pledge new funding to support this. However, the sad fact is that a lot of commercial developers aren’t interested in building affordable housing, even with government subsidies, because they can make greater profits building larger, expensive homes in affluent areas.
“Affordable homes lack appeal to volume house builders that prefer to focus on larger, more expensive homes that generate greater profits, and there are plenty of alternative government funding streams to support this kind of work. To counter this commercial imperative, it falls to local council planning authorities to stipulate that developers must include affordable housing within new projects. Local councils usually require that between 25 per cent and 40 per cent of new homes are affordable, depending on location and local need. However, many developers already circumvent the local planning system and avoid the affordable housing requirement through, for example, a legislative loophole known as permitted development rights… The Local Government Association estimates that more than 13,500 affordable homes have been “lost” across England in this way over the past four years. Rather than close the loophole, government is planning to extend it to give developers greater freedoms.” (Dr Kerry Traynor, Heseltine Institute COVID-19 Policy Briefing Paper)
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SAFE Community Homes CLT 