London Green Assembly Member Darren Johnson has lambasted Mayor Boris Johnson’s “hopeless track record on family-sized housing”
Darren Johnson AM remarks upon the “unacceptable” family social housing situation. Photograph courtesy of Stephen Richards.
Figures obtained by Darren Johnson AM show that the Mayor has only built an average of 575 social and affordable rent homes with four or more bedrooms each year over the period 2011-12 to 2013-14, counting for 10 per cent of the total social and affordable rent build. The Mayor’s housing evidence base suggested that London needed 5,720 social rented homes with four or more bedrooms to be built each year, 40 per cent of the total social rent build. This follows a two-thirds cut to the Mayor’s affordable housing budget in 2011, and prefigures a further 25% cut to come in 2015.
Darren Johnson said: “The Mayor’s hopeless track record on family-sized housing is part of the reason why more families in London are squeezed into overcrowded homes. I’ve heard from children who have to do their homework on the loo because they don’t have enough space. It’s totally unacceptable that so few family sized homes are being built.
“The Mayor should be honest about his failure to secure enough money to build the homes that Londoners need. It costs more to build larger homes, so accepting two consecutive cuts to his budget has meant he isn’t building anything like enough of them.”