After presiding over a housing crisis for five years, David Cameron is now giving it both metaphorical barrels. On Monday, he is launching a project to redevelop 100 of the worst estates in England. This is in response, he says, to the part bad housing plays in drug abuse, crime and family breakdown. The old, high-rise estates will be replaced, largely with private funding, with new low-rise homes built at a higher density. The private sector will get a share of the new homes to sell. At the end of the process, there will be less social housing.
But some of the homes will be marketed as “affordable”. This is part of the prime minister’s big new idea of starter homes, which he says will revolutionise Britain’s residential market. He could be right – but not in the way he imagines. Starter homes have the potential to upend Britain’s housing market: not by bringing more homes onto the market – but by making them even more expensive. The policy will pump billions of public money into building accommodation that only the rich will be able to afford. It is a bargain for the wealthy and the big developers. For everyone else, it is expensive and unjust.
Related: David Cameron vows to ‘blitz’ poverty by demolishing UK's worst sink estates
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