Homes under the hammer: Hackney Gazette Talking Point

18 Nov 2010
The dream of one day owning your home is little more than just that for many Hackney folk, as the reality of escalating house prices became clear last week. 

Figures from the National Housing Federation showed that the average home in Hackney now costs a whopping £314,322.

This means first time buyers now need to be earning a salary of almost £80,000 to even afford the average home in Hackney. 

Considering the average salary in Hackney is £26,281, most people will need to find three times their salary, if not more, to get a foot on the housing ladder.

This is ludicrous and somewhat considering Hackney was once seen as an undesirable borough to live in, and now people can’t afford to live here.

But a lot has changed. Hackney has attracted people from all walks of life and different backgrounds. We have the biggest Hasidic Jew population in Europe and significant Turkish, Kurdish and Vietnamese communities as well.

We have the Olympics being built on our doorstep, a vibrant art community and improved transport links into Central London.

House prices are booming because of all this but also because housing in Hackney is at a premium, because we also simply do not have much space to build new homes.

But decisions by the Coalition government in last month’s spending review around housing benefit is likely to cause a whole lot of new problems here in Hackney.

Our borough has the highest number of housing benefit claimants in the whole of London; some 40,570 receive money to help pay their rent, or 1 in 5 of all Hackney residents.

The Coalition’s decision to cap the amount of benefit from next April means many will not receive as much as they currently do and will end up having to make up the difference for the rent from their own pocket.

While some people will be able to afford this change, others will be forced to consider moving into cheaper accommodation, and perhaps out of Hackney and away from their families altogether.

My fear is that London will look very different thanks to these new proposals. People who claim housing benefit will be completely priced out of London’s most exclusive areas and pushed into out into far less desirable areas.

In a debate in the House late last month I reminded the Coalition that London has always been a place, unlike New York, where the rich and poor live side by side. 

Walking down the street in Hackney, it is not unusual to see a million pound house back onto a council estate or a family earning hundreds of thousands of pounds living next door to single parent families.

I myself live on the former Holly Street estate which has a mix of social and privately rented housing.

But we must challenge this picture the Coalition like to paint that the majority of housing benefit claimants are scrounging off the state.

Indeed the majority of people claiming housing benefit are not unemployed, sitting around watching daytime TV as the Coalition would like us to believe.

In reality, the vast majority of housing benefit claimants are actually in work and need benefits to top up their modest salaries.

Figures show that 99.8% of people, who claim housing benefit will be affected by the cap but of these, 60% actually work, care for somebody or are pensioners. In London alone, one third or 33% of claimants of Local Housing Allowance are actually in employment. 

These are hard working people, working in low paid jobs or people looking after disabled people or pensioners, who rely on benefits to top up their salaries to enable them to live areas in which they have lived all their lives. 

It is not fair to make them pay with their homes for the mistakes of those in the City who helped bring about such economic turmoil. 

Hackney is a fantastic borough and it has lots to look forward to in its future.

The Olympics will make the East End better more desirable an area to live, but will it inevitably also push rents up.

But I am keen we make the most of the opportunities. The flats built to house the athlete’s in the 2012 Games and later sold, should be priced at the budget of local people, not sold to the affluent few in search of a city pad.

Having a secure home is something I want to see for everyone and it is essential that we ensure these cuts do not take away that basic right.



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