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Re:"Social" - 2006/09/01 00:31Dare I be the devils advocate?
What precisely does "affordable housing" mean?
District Councils are responsible for maintaining a housing register - housing applicants are prioritised (within Lewes district) by a point based system. More points are awarded depending upon each applicants circumstances, including medical points. Consequently persons with a physical disability, learning disability, severe and enduring mental health problem or drug/alcohol issues will be prioritised.
Affordable housing is a term that applies to housing that is subsidised in some shape or form by tax-payers (i.e. below market rent or shared leasehold).
Due to the increase in house prices and the rental market, more & more people are applying for subsidised housing, creating more demand than can be supplied. Hence the situation that we are currently facing = ODPM says build more homes in the South-East.
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msw
Re:"Social" - 2006/09/01 20:09My understanding, which may be wrong, is that the targets set by the appropriate bodies for building new homes in this district are already easily met by existing developments.
in terms of this proposal, I also wonder what the impact of such a dense development has upon the daily living experience of the people to whom sufficient housing points will be allocated to gain them a subsidised home. If the 25% figure is achieved, then according to Marjorie's information on housing allocation, some 200 households in the development will be living with social needs which are not being factored into medical and social provision in the town.
It makes me wonder whether this will all be too much for the developer - perhaps it will be easier for him to gain the outline planning permission and then sell the headaches onto someone else having made an enormous profit in the process.
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John Stockdale
Re:"Social" - 2006/09/03 13:15Developer sell on to a bigger player? Pocket a huge short term gain, regardless of the social consequences or the impact on the life of this Town? This can't be right. Charles Style has told us he's here for the long haul. I'm surprised MSW should be so cynical.
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msw
Re:"Social" - 2006/09/07 00:20Cynical or no, and you are probably right, the fact remains that there can have been little thought given by the developer to the nature of the affordable housing to be built. My recollection of the plans is that they show appartments, not family homes and that the developer has said elswhere something along the lines of there being no need for schools etc as people buying the apartments will not have children. How does this reflect current housing need and what is the developer basing his planning on in this respect? I would have thought that one of the big issues is housing for families (and there is ample evidence of such housing not being best provided by apartment buildings within our culture). The notion that people will downsize from family houses to flats in his development, thereby freeing up more spacious housing stock, has been offered by Charles Style but how realistic is that - it is just as likely that they will continue to live in their large houses and release their equity and buy a flat as an investment. None of this hangs together, and unless people have a clear mental health diagnosis or are incapacitated in another clearly demonstrable way with evidence from professional assessments, they won't get a look in on the housing list and so will not be referred to whichever housing association takes on whatever is built (if it ever is). I also wonder how local social services and health provisions will be resourced to meet an additional need (unless of course there are already 200 homeless people in Lewes with sufficient housing points to guarantee them a home in the proposed development). Like much else in this development, the spin of "affordable housing" promises more that the developer is likely to be able to deliver.
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Marjory Phillips
Re:"Social" - 2007/04/01 02:30Lewes District Council now require 40% of units built in Lewes to be available for social housing.
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