100 Years of Council Housing

I've been reading a publication that I received from the Local Government Association and came across an article about the Council housing centenary. It really struck a chord with me how our Council has shamefully neglected our low/middle earners and their housing needs, often priced out of the private rental sector.

I was recently speaking to a 30 something from Rayleigh who described the housing crisis to me. He said that he 'despaired' and often lay awake at night thinking about it. At the time, I was admittedly a little taken about and had little to offer in return to his own personal crisis.

He said that he 'despaired' and often lay awake at night thinking about it.

It's got me thinking about how many others in our district our going through the same desperation. This surely can't be happening in the rosy picture that we tend to paint of our district?

As a Councillor, I wish that others in the power of granting planning applications would try to empathise with our low/middle-class earners when they seem to remove, at will, social & affordable housing. We should be doing much much better than this for our residents.

If those 500 houses on Rawreth Lane were 75-100% social housing, wouldn't that be meeting the needs of our residents better? Let me know what you think in the comments below.

You can read more about the future of housing here