Council approves 1000 new affordable homes
One thousand new affordable homes will be built in Conwy county over the next three years, says the lead councillor for housing.
Conwy’s deputy leader Cllr Emily Owen is also the cabinet member for housing and made the promise at a full council meeting at the council’s Coed Pella HQ.
Speaking at a full council meeting, Cllr Owen claimed the authority had “drawn down” more housing grants than ever before to tackle the issue of affordable housing.
Homelessness
During a section of the meeting reserved for announcements, Cllr Owen told the chamber Conwy was working to improve homelessness, end bed-and-breakfasts use for those without a home, and build one thousand affordable homes.
“You’ll know that we’ve got an ambitious plan to end the use of bed and breakfasts for our homeless within a two-year period,” said Cllr Owen.
“There’s been lots of focus on support and how we are going to do that, and we’ve had a really good consultation going on with our people who are experiencing homelessness.”
Support
Cllr Owen continued: We’ve been out to 20 different sessions talking to them about what would have helped prevent being homeless and what other support we can offer so we can shape our services and our support around need and what they are needing at the moment.
“So that’s a really good piece of work that is ongoing, making sure we’ve had some good input there, and we also had the projection figures in. So as you’ll know over the last few years, we’ve drawn down the most ever housing grants we’ve ever had within Conwy Council, and as you’ll also know, there is then a bit of a lag from drawing grants down to houses because of planning and actually building and things.”
She added: “But it means the projections have come through to say over the next three years there will be over a thousand new homes coming into Conwy that are affordable homes, which is really good news and a massive improvement on what our delivery figures have been.”
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Are these actually needed? The population of Conwy fell between the last two censuses, the percentage of Welsh speakers fell, and the natural Welsh born population is 55%. Housing associations continually refuse to release data on their housing criteria, citing ‘data protection’ laws. More tax payer funded colonization disguised as ‘caring for the homeless.’
The population falling isn’t relevant if locals still can’t afford to rent or buy.
The council could very easily introduce schemes, as Gwynedd has done, to help locals buy or rent houses from the existing housing stock. There are actually over 1500 empty homes in Conwy. Building more and more houses when the existing population is falling shows that they are not being supplied for local people. Houses are assets not goods, and ‘supply and demand’ doesn’t work with them. It’s pure ideological. So it is a relevant point, I think.
Supply and demand does work for housing. You can put your property on the market for whatever you like but it won’t sell if there are another ten like it available for less. To sell you need to drop the price so it’s cheaper than the other ten.
Are these actually needed? NO, they are for people who come to Cymru from over Offa’s Dyke.
Are you suggesting councils in England are transferring their homeless to councils in Wales to house, and these are being prioritised over locals in need of housing? Is there evidence of this happening?
The population numbers are not relevant in the case of housing due to the fact more houses are now occupied by one person due to divorce, one half of a couple living longer or people choosing to remain single. In days gone by this was rare.