From where I sit

I spent quite a bit of the recent holiday season travelling, and with eight flights in 11 days it’s perhaps not surprising that it’s an airport metaphor that has come to mind as I write this article.
Housing associations seemed to have been hanging around in the departure lounge for much of the last parliament – our flight never being called – while homeowners and developers took the fast-track queue to their gates....

Anyone else noticed that there just aren’t enough hours in the day (or days in the week, weeks in the year etc)?  It’s the same with money – there’s just not enough to go round.  So I don’t know about you, but I find myself entering the traditional season...

You know that familiar part of radio interviews where some musician is posed contradictory alternatives and asked to choose quickly between them?  “Meat or fish?”; “United or City?”; “books or movies?”.
Only two choices?
Of course, the answers are just what passes for entertainment, and while everyone knows that the real world is more complex, nobody is going to be amused by an answer that goes “Well, I love a good novel on a wet Sunday afternoon, but Orange Wednesday...

There is much to commend the work that Savills, the National Housing Federation and JRF have put into devising a better rent model than the hotchpotch nonsense we have now of Affordable Rent (AR) and Social Rent (SR).
Without doubt, any rent regime that relates to the market value of property (as both AR and SR do in their different ways) when the intended occupant, by definition, is somebody unable to compete in the market, is bound to be flawed. So the reliance...