Here is what Shelter, the housing charity says about the shortage of good quality, reasonably priced places to live in Britain:

“England is suffering a massive housing crisis. There simply aren’t enough decent, affordable homes.

• More than two million people find their rent or mortgage a constant struggle or are falling behind with payments.
• Against a background of mounting debt across the country, increasing numbers of homeowners are having their homes repossessed, because they are no longer able to keep up with their mortgage repayments.
• Second home ownership is pricing local people out of many rural areas.
• Over 1.7 million households are currently waiting for social housing.
• Some homeless households – many with dependent children – wait for years in temporary accommodation.
• Families renting privately on low incomes have to put up with poor living conditions and little security.
• The number of new households is increasing faster than the number of house builds.
• And at the sharpest end, many hundreds of people sleep rough on the streets every night, cold and fearing for their safety.”

Here is what Faisal Islam from Channel 4 has been told by the Con Dems:

“Government insiders have confirmed that the rough magnitude of cuts to the £8.4bn social housing budget, and the £3.9bn university teaching grant will be 60-80 per cent.

This will, say housing associations, collapse house building in Britain, even further.

Social landlords put in 60 per cent (to the taxpayers 40 per cent) of the funding for almost half (50,000) of the 113,000 homes built in the UK last year. Insiders suggest that will fall to hundreds.”

Hundreds of new affordable homes will be built when the leading housing organisation says 1.7 million households are waiting for new homes. According to the National Housing Federation (NHF) that equates to 4.5 million people.  The total number of homes being built is at its lowest level since the Second World War with just 113,000 built in 2009/10. That was under Labour.

Faisal Islam adds:

“ …the Treasury has put together a remarkable mathematical spreadsheet to try to numerically rank all capital investment spending in Britain, on the basis of contribution to economic growth.

Social housing did not score highly on this spreadsheet. Rail scored highly, as did the Mersey Gateway suspension bridge between Runcorn and Widnes and the Diamond Synchrotron in Oxfordshire.”

A bridge for commuters and freight  is more important than homes and construction jobs. Remember that the Treasury is where the”best brains” in the British Civil Service are to be found. Jesus wept!

The NHF argues that under the financing being proposed by the Con Dems:

· “Around 270,000 affordable homes would not be built up to 2020 (the total would fall from 426,000 to 157,000, a drop of 36,700 a year for nine years).
· 674,000 more people would be left in housing need
· Around 283,000 jobs in the construction industry would be axed or not created by 2020
· And the wider economy would also suffer, with the cuts reducing economic activity by around £58bn over the next nine years.

The federation is warning that the poorest communities would be hardest hit. “The government said it was committed to social housing and to protecting the most vulnerable,” says David Orr, chief executive of the group. “This can only be interpreted as a blatant betrayal of those promises and a kick in the teeth to millions of people stuck on waiting lists.”

This is class war of the very rich against the very poor and of course billions of pounds of state money will be poured into the parasites who own multiple properties in the private rented sector.