The pressure comes amid stepped-up blackmail by Washington DC which is now threatening that it will slow down or ever cut so-called “military aid” to the Neo-Nazi junta in case its forces don’t demonstrate they’re capable of advancing, taking and holding Russian position.
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To Fix the Housing Crisis, We Need Better Public Housing, Not More Homeowners
A government willing to confront the housing crisis head-on, rather than focusing on fostering owner occupation and the numbers game of maximizing private house-building, would do better to invest in quality public housing.
A row of semidetached houses in Welling, Greater London, UK, June 19, 2023. (Jason Alden / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
There is broad agreement that Britain’s housing system is in a deep crisis.
Rents are now at an all-time high. Prospective tenants increasingly find themselves having to bid for properties, pay months of rent upfront, and engage in lengthy “audition” processes to prove they are worthy enough tenants to get a property. Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to get myself a tenancy in South London by having my name pulled out of a hat. Renting, once the fallback option for those who can’t afford a deposit or secure a social tenancy, it is becoming more like a luxury.
Across England, over a quarter of a million people are homeless. The number of people trapped in temporary accommodation is now at its highest point for nearly two decades. Millions of renters are faced with mold and other serious hazards, with 14 percent of homes classified as “non-decent.” Figures from Shelter in 2021 found that the health of one in five renters is being harmed by poor housing and that four million people report cutting back on essentials to pay for housing costs. With rents soaring over the last year, these figures are unlikely to be representative of the peak of the current housing crisis.
At the other end of this polarized system, additional property ownership has doubled in just two decades. Around £1 trillion of wealth is now stored in second homes and Buy to Lets. And, since 2000, the equivalent of three of every four new homes have gone to the private rental sector — despite most people preferring to own their own home or rent from a social landlord.
There are over 250,000 long-term empty homes in England, with more houses empty in the short and medium term and many second homes that lie empty for much of the year. This is a system of housing defined by gross inequalities of almost every conceivable kind.
More Home Ownership Is Not the Answer
In this context, Labour’s decision to center higher levels of debt-financed homeownership and house-building, rather than stressing public housing and renters rights, in the local elections and Starmer’s recent housing speech, was ill-judged.
To meet its target of achieving a rate of home ownership of 70 percent by the end of the first term, Labour would need to support around 5 percent of households to become first-time buyers through its “mortgage guarantee scheme” — around 1.2 million. In the UK, the average mortgage size for a first-time buyer is currently £198,779. With this in mind, achieving the target without enormous state subsidy would involve significant increases in the national level of household debt. To illustrate, at current prices, mortgage levels and population levels, this would involve around £240 billion of extra debt. Accounting for population growth, the figure would be still higher. The split between private households and the debt taken on by the public sector is unclear, but under the most recent iteration of the government mortgage guarantee scheme, households borrow everything. It is, after all, a “guarantee,” not a grant or loan.
Achieving this with massive state subsidies would likely involve handing over large sums to prospective first-time buyers. This would be the predominantly middle and higher-income households who would meet the income-to-loan ratio and can afford to shoulder mortgage payments. While Labour may want large numbers of low-income households to participate in its mortgage guarantee scheme, this seems implausible within the financial system’s current rules, while scrapping rules like the loan-to-income ratio would encourage riskier lending.
Even if this process involved the state providing large loans on top of the mortgage, as was the case with Help to Buy, people on lower incomes would disproportionately struggle to access the scheme — someone on a low wage is going to struggle to borrow even 60 percent or 70 percent of a flat price in their area. An expansion of private household debt at this kind of scale would also present potential risks to the financial system, with ONS and Bank of England figures suggesting household debt is already approaching pre–financial crash levels.
Given Labour’s targets to cut the national debt, large-scale public subsidy seems both unlikely and an odd choice of priority. Building council housing at scale, on the other hand, would provide housing for working-class people with permanent tenure without saddling people with the debt accompanied by mortgage lending, while being genuinely accessible to those on low incomes.
This is no argument against universalism; essential services should be truly accessible and affordable (and ideally free). But means-testing becomes even worse when, by political calculation or flawed design, you exclude swathes of those on the lowest incomes.
Like the Help to Buy scheme, which involved £22 billion of public lending (enough to fund around 220,000 council homes, and the government’s stamp duty cuts) that could have funded over 180,000 new council houses over this decade, this policy approach risks prioritizing public spending that could further inflate house prices while leaving out those on lower incomes. It would be better to fund the public housing we desperately need.
While Labour has also pledged to restore “social housing” (itself including a wide range of tenures and affordability levels) to the second-biggest form of tenure, there are two catches. The first is that the private rental sector is only slightly bigger than the social housing sector. The second is that if Labour achieved its 70 percent homeownership target, it would also likely meet its social housing target by default. This is because expanding owner occupation will most likely involve reducing the size of the private rental sector, as swathes of private renters move on to become first-time buyers.
Fixing the Housing Crisis
If you look across Europe and much of the wider world, there is no correlation between high rates of homeownership and better social outcomes in housing. Many of the places with the best social outcomes in housing, like Vienna and the Netherlands, are characterized by lower rates of homeownership. With this in context, the UK’s obsession with homeownership as a necessity looks increasingly flawed. Instead of a mortgage guarantee, a better alternative might be a “Council Housing Guarantee.” When landlords decide to up and sell, sitting tenants could request that the council purchase the property. A state financial institution, at the national level, could finance the transaction by drawing on the comparatively lower borrowing rates available to government.
Labour has recently centered the government’s target of three hundred thousand new homes a year, recently watered down, as a priority for a prospective Labour government. The government’s own 2018 study undermines this claim, suggesting that building three hundred thousand homes a year for twenty years would only put a dent of 6 percent in house prices. While any cut in house prices is welcome, this suggests that the role of private housebuilding in ending the affordability crisis is overstated.
Recent comments from Starmer also raise questions about the ability of mass house-building under the current system to bring down house prices, with Starmer noting — not incorrectly — that many new homes are “expensive executive housing,” rather than homes affordable to people on ordinary incomes. In London, where this trend is the most acute, around 23 percent of new builds go to buyers overseas, while 29 percent are purchased as second homes, a growing proportion of new houses are sold for use as holiday lets, and a rising number go to institutional investors.
Labour has pledged to prevent more than 50 percent of new builds going to those abroad. But given that the status quo is well below this threshold, this would allow for current practice to continue unabated. While these trends are less pronounced outside London, they are still powerful across the country. At the other end of the scale, only 22.5 percent of new homes last year were “affordable” homes available for renters, and less than 2 percent of new homes were for social rent — the only tenure affordable for those on the lowest incomes.
It is increasingly plain to see that the current balance is dramatically skewed toward homes for better-off households and, in particular, multiple property owners. Labour has shown some limited signs that it is concerned about this. But tinkering with planning rules — without the will to genuinely tilt the balance away from developers or fund council housing at scale — will do little to rebalance the housing system.
Since 2017, the biggest seven private developers alone have handed around £8 billion to shareholders — enough to comfortably fund eighty thousand council homes. According to research from Sheffield Hallam University, these developers make a markup averaging over £60,000 per new home built. Without a major shift in the kind of homes we build, a large uptick in house-building could offer more for the shareholders of the big developers than the housing prospects of people on low and average incomes.
A government willing to confront the housing crisis head-on, rather than focusing on fostering owner occupation and the numbers game of maximizing private house-building, would do better to look at other options. Public borrowing and the money ploughed into tax reliefs and subsidies for home buyers both offer clear routes to building council housing at scale or funding acquisitions from the private sector. Ending Right to Buy, which has robbed the public sector of millions of low-cost homes, should be a given. The inflated price that landowners are legally entitled to when they sell for new house-building, known as “hope value,” should be abolished altogether. This would offer a route to cutting the cost of a new build dramatically and overnight.
The housing writer Vicky Spratt has argued that those without high salaries or help from well-off parents risk becoming just people who are “renting from the bank” when they buy their own homes. But wouldn’t it be preferable to rent deposit-free from a public landlord, an institution you own? Instead of the grim dichotomy of forking over rent to a private landlord or a bank, we could do so much better.
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WATCH: Senior Fatah official lauds terrorism in Jenin
Osama Al-Qawasmi, spokesman for the PA’s ruling Fatah party, hails terrorism in Jenin as ‘loftiest example of pride and honor.’
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Israel’s soccer squad going to the Olympics for the first time since 1976
The blue-and-whites were assured a place even before their semifinal game in the European Championships on Wednesday.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
For only the third time in its history, Israel will be fielding a soccer team at the Summer Olympics next year, thanks to the extraordinary success of its youth national squad.
In an interview with Israel Hayom, head coach Guy Luzon said with a large smile that the squad was “happy, excited, can’t wait to get there!”
When the interviewer asked for reactions to fact that it had been 47 years since Israel had taken a soccer team to the ultimate quadrennial event, star goalkeeper Daniel Peretz said with a grin, “History was born in order to break it.”
The last time, at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Israel made it to the quarterfinals before bowing to Bulgaria. Eight years earlier, in 1968’s Mexico City Olympic Games, they also lost in the quarters, this time to soccer powerhouse Brazil.
The team reached the Olympics by gaining a semifinal spot against England in the ongoing Under-21 European Championship, after a thrilling win Saturday night over Georgia that was gained in a penalty shootout when 120 minutes of regular play ended in a scoreless tie.
Usually only three of the top four European youth teams automatically qualify for the Olympics, but since England competes there as Great Britain (comprising Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well), it can’t receive a spot as a separate country.
In an interview after the Georgia win but before knowing if England would be the team’s next hurdle on Wednesday, Luzon had said he was “dying, dying, dying to know” whom they would be playing “in order to get to Paris. It’s beyond a fantasy, beyond anything else,” he said, shaking his head. “I dream about going there.”
Many members of the team also played in the Under-20 World Cup last month, when Israel achieved an almost-unbelievable third place finish against the world’s best youth teams.
The Paris Olympics will start July 24, 2024 and run for just over two weeks. In soccer, four teams in four groups will play each other first. The top two teams in each group will then go on to play in a single-game knockout format from the quarterfinals on. The 16-nation roster is not yet set, although it is already known that France, as host, are in, as are the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Spain, which will be playing Ukraine in the other European semifinals.
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‘Shameful’ – Left-wing activist expelled from mosque for immodest dress, imam quits
“When I came to the mosque, I was surprised that a group of Jews had arrived in the clothes you saw,” said the imam. “We kicked them out.”
By Adina Katz, World Israel News
A senior executive of a prominent left-wing NGO was expelled from a mosque in a Palestinian Authority-controlled town and an imam was forced to resign, after she chose to visit the holy site in a dress that left her knees and lower legs exposed.
New Israel Fund Associate Director Shira Ben Sasson Furstenberg, along with other left-wing Jewish activists, had arranged a “solidarity visit” at a mosque in the PA town of Urif, coordinating in advance with the municipality’s leaders and the man responsible for the local mosque, Sheikh Karem Shahada.
The activists asked to visit Urif after settlers reportedly vandalized buildings in the town, following the brutal shooting terror attack that killed four Israeli civilians in the nearby town of Eli.
But when photos emerged of the group’s visit, which included shots of Ben Sasson Furstenberg clad in a short-sleeved, above-the-knee dress, women with uncovered heads, and men and women sitting together inside the mosque, residents of Urif were outraged.
Sheikh Shada then posted an Arabic-language video to his social media accounts in an attempt to save face, which was translated by HaKol HaYehudi.
“When I came to the mosque, I was surprised that a group of Jews had arrived in the clothes you saw,” Shahada said.
“Of course, what happened is a sad thing, it is a forbidden thing and it is a shameful thing. And of course, I understood the danger of the situation, when I looked and saw them in this way.”
Shahada then claimed that the village’s council had been responsible for planning the visit, and that he had been aware that the group in question were “Jewish infidels,” he would not have permitted them to tour the mosque.
“I told them, you can’t stay, and we kicked them out,” Shadada said.
However, the explanatory video could not save Shahada’s standing at the mosque. Facing enormous backlash from local residents, he resigned from his position as imam on Monday morning, according to a Jewish Press report.
Several weeks ago, a different left-wing group posted guidelines for Israelis wishing to engage in a solidarity visit to the town of Huwara, from which numerous deadly terror attacks have originated in recent months.
The group’s request that women dress conservatively for the visit was widely mocked on Twitter, as users noted the inherent hypocrisy among left-wing activists who are staunchly opposed to influence from Orthodox Jews in the public sphere yet indulgent of Islamic modesty standards.
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COVID Vaccine Injury Treatment: Fasting for 48-72 Hours Creates Autophagy
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The goal of this short article is to introduce the idea of prolonged fasting as a powerful means of getting rid of …
The post Selected Articles: COVID Vaccine Injury Treatment: Fasting for 48-72 Hours Creates Autophagy appeared first on Global Research.
PA freezes security cooperation with Israel over Jenin operation
No security coordination until further notice and a complaint will be filed with the International Court of Justice as the IDF’s anti-terror raid is called a “massacre.”
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
The Palestinian Authority (PA) announced Monday evening that it was immediately ceasing all security coordination with Israel due to the IDF’s anti-terror Operation Home and Garden in Jenin that began that morning, which it deemed a “massacre.”
“There is no more security coordination with the occupation government,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, after an emergency meeting was convened in the PA capital, Ramallah. “The leadership has decided to go to the [UN] Security Council to implement the decision to protect the Palestinian people, [and] approach the International Court of Justice to add a case on the massacre in Jenin.”
Earlier in the day, Abu Rudeineh had termed the operation a “war crime” against “our defenseless people.” Abbas had called for international sanctions on Israel and an immediate halt to the “terror aggression” on Jenin.
The IDF sent a large force into the Palestinian Authority-administered city to root out as much of its terrorist infrastructure as possible in a limited timeframe, as the government announced it has no intentions of staying there long-term.
In pinpoint raids both on the ground and from the air, hundreds of improvised explosive devices have been found in various caches, including under a mosque, command and control centers and weapons production labs have been destroyed, and more than 100 terrorists have been arrested.
Ten terrorists have been killed in live fire clashes with the IDF troops and some 100 have been wounded, according to the Palestinians’ own reports.
Ironically, the American State Department had put out a statement in the evening saying, “Today’s events further underscore the urgent need for Israeli and Palestinian security forces to work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank.”
The U.S. had also reaffirmed Israel’s “right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups,” while urging Jerusalem to “take all possible precautions to prevent the loss of civilian lives.”
Israel’s unified messaging about the Jenin operation has emphasized that it is not aimed at the PA, which officially controls Jenin, one of the largest cities in its territory, but whose security forces have not been able to stop local Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists from escalating their attacks on Jewish drivers and settlements in Judea and Samaria over the last several months.
Jenin has been the source of hundreds of shootings, firebombings and rock-throwing incidents that have recently claimed the lives of several Israelis, and the regional council heads have sharply criticized the government for abandoning its citizens to the constant terror.
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