Kate Davies is the Chief Executive of the Notting Hill Housing Trust, which has taken a progressive and positive approach to home ownership. Here she offers advice on how Councils could do the same.
Most people do not need much encouragement to become home owners. Having
choice over your home, building an asset and having your own secure base is important to most of us, even those who are renting in the private or social sector. The main reason people rent from the Council, or remain in the private rented sector for a long period is poverty.
So if Councils wish to help people into home ownership the most important thing they could do would be to help them into work and out of poverty. Few Councils do this actively, and yet they are well placed to
do so. What about a Council that focuses hard on attracting jobs, creating masses of work experience for the unemployed, making sure schools prepare students for work, providing information on opportunities, linking different departments to focus on this objective?
Once working, savings schemes seem a good idea. Councils could educate children and adults more - there are shocking levels of financial illiteracy in this country. The Council could set up a savings scheme
and perhaps link this up with a payments scheme for all the things people pay their council for - from Council tax to library fines.
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