Buy up homes for homeless

Homes that cannot be sold because of the property crash should be bought by the Government for Rochdale’s rising army of homeless, MPs have demanded.

Any home on the market for one year should be made available for families on local authority waiting lists, a report by a Commons committee said.

The move would help homeowners desperate to sell, as well as providing badly-needed family homes with gardens for those trapped in the housing crisis, according to the all-party communities committee.

Its hard-hitting report also warns that the Government appears powerless to prevent the banks repossessing homes — despite part-owning some of them and announcing a blizzard of initiatives.

And it calls for sanctions against mortgage lenders who ignore Government guidelines that homeowners should only be evicted as a last resort.

The number of families waiting for a council or housing association home in Oldham is 4,819 — around one in 20 of all households.

Ministers have already set up a £160 million National Clearing House sceheme to buy up new homes that developers are unable to sell, with 4,800 purchased by last month.

So far, they have stepped back from extending that scheme to homes already privately-owned, believing that is a job for housing associations.

But the report, entitled Housing and the Credit Crunch, demands that the Government step in because of the scale of the crisis, using cash originally set aside to build affordable homes.

It concludes: “Priority should be given to the purchase of homes where the transaction would enable elderly homeowners to gain access to much-needed sheltered accommodation.

“The refurbishment of these existing homes for social rent will help utilise skills and capacity in the construction industry which might otherwise be lost.”