Thread by @PeteApps

In advance of the inevitable accusations of reckless spending over Labour's pledge of £75bn for social housing over a five year term:

There is a fairly widely accepted economic case that state investment in social housing is a good economic move which pays for itself long term

This is best laid out in this report written by Capital Economics which concluded "the economic and fiscal case for building new
social rent housing is unanswerable" d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/themes/5417d73…

The logic is that the money is gained back because families in housing benefit are housed in lower rent homes - reducing the welfare bill (average £110 per week in PRS compared to £89 social housing)

And that's without even counting the less tangible savings of giving families secure accommodation, and the economic benefits of house building generally.

The conclusion was a 100,000 home a year programme would mean the country was £0.9 trillion better off over 50 years

Since 2010, investment in social rented housing has plummeted, with the graph looking like this. In the same period, housing benefit spend and temporary accommodation costs have spiralled

There are reasonable attacks to make on the Labour policy proposal:

1. The split between councils (100,000) and housing associations (50,000) does not reflect the reality of the market. There is no way councils can scale up like that in 5 years. My sense is the party know this

2. They haven't yet addressed the issue of the land to build these homes on - which is the key blockage to any social housing programme aside from cash. There are also all the longstanding issues with capacity + quality in the construction sector to contend with

But the spending itself is backed by economic analysis - as well as the more obvious benefits in terms of social policy

Addendum: the criticism on not having the land is all the more so since the manifesto keeps pledges to protect the green belt

(and as all housing folks know, that doesn't mean greenfield)