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“Moving to Islington is impossible for an ordinary person,” says local MP Dame Emily Thornberry as Parliament was told London’s housing had been hit by a “perfect storm”. London MPs lined up during a Commons debate to outline the scale of the crisis facing the capital which is leaving families in some appalling accommodation. “Frankly, politics in Islington begins and ends with housing,” Dame Emily stressed. “We have some very rich people, some lucky people and some very poor people in Islington, but moving to Islington is impossible for an ordinary person.” She added that for many people who wanted to rent privately in Islington it meant house sharing and “having a single person sleeping in the sitting room, and other single people sleeping in the bedrooms”. She explained there were “120,000 people crammed into the seventh smallest constituency in the country” in Islington South and Finsbury. Islington council has a policy that 50% of all new developments needed to be affordable, she added, given how expensive land was and that had not stopped new home schemes. The Labour MP also told of the “large, dark, sad tower blocks” bought for investment purposes with “their lights off at night” and “nobody on the voter register” and which “laugh at the 17,000 people on the waiting list in Islington who desperately need social housing”. Tory MPs lined up to blamed London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan for the housing crisis. Housing minister Matthew Pennycook told the Westminster Hall debate that it was “not in dispute that house building in London is in crisis”. So the Government was backing a two-year plan for schemes on private land in the capital to proceed without a viability assessment if they delivered at least 20% rather than 35% affordable housing, with a minimum of 60% social rent. The capital was facing a series of specific challenges including that it is mainly new blocks of flats which “have become more challenging to deliver over recent years”, and it has depended on “demand from international buyers and investors, whose appetite to purchase private market homes has diminished”. It also has a higher proportion of landowners, and traders acting on their behalf, who are global investors allocating development funding based on competing returns globally and across asset classes, he added. “The combination of those and other factors has resulted in a perfect storm for house building in our capital,” Mr Pennycook, MP for Greenwich and Woolwich said. “That perfect storm has real-world implications for Londoners in housing need.” Hackney South and Shoreditch Labour MP Dame Meg Hillier told the debate that house prices in Hackney were 18.5 times average income “so all the young professionals who might want to get on the housing ladder are stuck in shared accommodation”. Other families were having to live with children in triple bunk beds in a room. Leyton and Wanstead Labour MP Calvin Bailey told how a nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital had “for 20 years moved between insecure rentals and temporary housing”. Old Bexley and Sidcup Conservative MP Louie French, who secured the debate, said Sir Sadiq’s housing policies had “backfired”. “Demanding that 35% of homes built privately are affordable has made house building in London unviable,” he stressed. Orpington MP Gareth Bacon added: “London is Europe’s wealthiest city, one of the world’s most desirable destinations and the capital of our great country. “What we have seen in recent years in Greater London is a constantly worsening housing shortage, and a mayor seemingly completely incapable of tackling a problem that is spiralling out of control.” However, Bermondsey and Old Southwark Labour MP Neil Coyle stressed: “Under Sadiq Khan’s period in City Hall, there have been 8,236 Greater London Authority-funded affordable starts in my borough of Southwark, including 636 completions in the last year.” Uxbridge and South Ruislip Labour MP Danny Beales criticised the “bidding war” between the Home Office seeking housing for asylum seekers and Hillingdon council trying to get homes for local people, which he stressed only benefited landlords. Harrow East Conservative MP Bob Blackman highlighted a briefing from charity Crisis which showed that more than 13,231 people were rough sleeping in London during the last year. The senior Conservative stressed that this was a “record high and a 10% increase on the previous year” and that some 70,000 households, including 90,000 children, were in temporary accommodation.
