Lord Bailey is a member of the London Assembly and a former candidate for Mayor of London.
Every month, millions of Londoners are forced to perform the same painful calculation. The wages come in, and before anything else can be considered, the rent or mortgage must be paid. Then come the bills, the food shop, the travel costs, the children’s needs, and the rising cost of just existing in London. It eats people up, and it stunts their development. Increasingly, it is getting more and more out of hand and putting a greater burden on people.
I know what housing insecurity feels like. I know what it is to be homeless and to worry about where you are going to sleep. That experience never leaves you. It teaches you that stable housing is not just about bricks and mortar. It is about dignity, safety, health, family, opportunity, and peace of mind. If a secure home can transform a person’s life, the absence of one can destroy it.
That is why I was proud in May to host my second annual London Housing Conference, bringing together people from across the housing sector to speak honestly about the crisis facing our city. We heard from construction firms, council leaders, Members of Parliament, landlords and housing associations. Their message was clear: London is being held back by high costs, insecure finance, excessive regulation, a weak economy and a planning system that too often makes building homes harder, not easier. And whilst this plays out, our Mayor is hitting send on glitzy press releases claiming that everything is fine and that, in fact, housing is coming along at record rates.
Sir Sadiq Khan has let London down. Under his tenure, housing starts have collapsed, and completions have failed to match the scale of the crisis. His own Affordable Housing Programme promised 35,000 homes, yet only around 2,600 have been completed, and fewer than half have even been started. The failure has become so serious that his own Government has had to place the programme under special measures.
Now, I would support any Mayor of London, from any party, who was serious about building the homes London needs. This issue is bigger than politics. It is about people’s lives. It is about whether London remains a city of opportunity or becomes a city where only the wealthy can put down roots.
But this Mayor has failed spectacularly. He could have done more to unlock brownfield land owned by the Mayoralty. He could have used housing funds more creatively to bring empty homes back into use. He could have worked with builders, boroughs and housing associations to make difficult sites viable. He could have listened when the sector warned that unrealistic demands would stop homes being built.
You cannot play politics with people’s homes. You cannot claim success while families are stuck on waiting lists, councils are buckling under temporary accommodation costs, and young Londoners are priced out of the city they grew up in.
In the coming months, I will bring together the findings of this year’s London Housing Conference and set out practical recommendations for the Mayor and the Government. Every statistic in London’s housing crisis represents a real person. A real family. A real struggle. Behind every failed target is a child without a permanent bedroom, a worker priced out of their community, or a parent wondering how they will make the rent next month.
London is the greatest city in the world. But it cannot remain so if ordinary Londoners cannot afford to live here. Our Mayor has failed them, and now the responsibility is on all of us to get London building again.