What is affordable housing?

People are up in arms about developers lobbying and applying to build on every bit of the south east.. But what we do not know is they have to give something back.

I heard on twitter that for the #wokyregen the princely sum of £28k per dwelling was to be paid to the council for each planned dwelling.

There is also a requirement for ‘affordable housing’. So that clears that up.

Regarding the £28k. How much is the land worth with and without planning permission. Much more than £28k. That puts a lot of money behind influencing planning decisions. Where there is a way there is a will. Also 28k is the highest I've heard.

But then there is the affordable housing the developers build for our low paid and needy.

But what does ‘affordable housing’ really mean.

Here is the council's own information on what ‘affordable housing’ is. Have a look. See if you can find out what it means from a cost to the developer point of view?

http://www.wokingham.gov.uk/planningcontrol/planning/planningpolicies/housing/adoptedaffordablehousingspd/

Hard to put in into a nutshell as there are lots of options and there are a lot of discretionary work arounds. However.

Most significant developments will make 40% affordable housing of which.
20% will be 1 bedroom flats and houses.
15% 2-bed flats
30% 2 bed houses
20% 3 bed houses (some as bungalows for dissabled)
15% 4 bedroom +

Shared ownership. Part owners rent the councils / housing association / registered providers stake for 1.5%.
Intermediate affordable housing. Prices and rents are above social prices but below market prices but can be privately owned. What is to stop the developer from selling these houses to friends and landlords I don’t know.
Social rented housing. Guideline target rents
Affordable rent. No more than 80% of local market rates

The provision of affordable housing will be based on ‘70% social rent 30% intermediate housing model of the Lewel’s Affordable Housing Visibility Study paragraph 4.32 of the core strategy. No I have not bothered. But it is discretionary anyway.

At a council meeting I attended recently a developer was trying do get 126 developments into an area where 100 is supposed to be the maximum and it was clear that some of our representatives were keen to just ignore, since it is discretionary notably Mark Cupif, Head of Development Management who even suggested the council might loose an appeal and have to pay costs, even though there were glaring ‘may’ statments in the application. When questioned about the £16k / dwelling section 106 that was suggested in the deal Mark also said that the figure was 'normal'.

The application had 5 members back the a rejection of the application and it was clearly to me that it was a significant disappointment some of the other speakers? Why?

There is a lot to read here and a lot of it is confusing waffle so it would be great to get some clarification on the following questions.

The transfer of affordable housing to the council, housing association or registered provider. Is that free i.e. developers are building 40% of properties to ‘give’ to whoever is providing the care? Or do ‘we’ the borough simply buy those properties for the affordable housing schemes?

There is a Subsidy payment to developers. Appears to be about 5% of the project sell value irrespective of affordable housing. What's that about?

If a property is given to an approved provider. How does that work. I assume they don’t just keep the money they make on the partial rent on a house they did not pay for?

If an ‘affordable’ home ends up in the 80% market rate privately owned category. What is to stop these from being sold cheap to profiteers?

Call me old fashioned but I think affordable homes is for houses to cost  4 to 5 times a working salary. About half what they are now.

That’s not going to happen without one of these.
1. A very nasty war (no thanks)
2. A financial revolution that no-one can predict the outcome of (no thanks but if we must)
3. High inflation (perhaps 7% for ten years, iin all things, including salaries but not property, achieved by the government getting rid of all these easy ways to continue to pay too much for property and making renting out property except the most exclusive unprofitable.

So I go for option 3.

Any other options please let me know.