Liberal Democrat mayoral candidate Rob Blackie launched his housing policy in Sutton this morning.
Mr Blackie has pledged to create a London-owned housing developer to deliver "high-quality, affordable homes" if elected next month.
Mr Blackie has pledged to create a London-owned housing developer to deliver "high-quality, affordable homes" if elected next month.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 There is a complete housing crisis in London. Rents have gone through the roof, people are
00:05 finding it impossible to buy a house and that's creating a huge amount of stress for people.
00:11 And at its root we're just not building enough housing. London's population has gone up by
00:16 a million in recent years. We just haven't built enough housing to do for it. We're trying
00:19 to squeeze all those people into the existing housing. So the only solution is to build
00:24 more. And one of the things I'm saying today is if I'm elected as mayor we'll have a London-wide
00:29 development company that builds its own housing so we can accelerate building lots of housing
00:35 in London and bring those rents down. Now we've got a great example of that in Sutton
00:40 where the local Live Dem council has done exactly that with a company called Sutton
00:44 Living. They've built this block of flats behind me, they've sold some of them, they're
00:49 renting out the rest of them and they're using that to pay for more affordable housing on
00:53 another site. So everyone gets good quality housing, everyone's happy with it and we're
00:59 starting to solve that housing problem. If you look at Sutton as a council you'll see
01:03 they're one of the few councils in London who consistently hit their social housing
01:07 targets by building lots of housing and that's what's helping to keep rents down locally
01:11 compared to the rest of London.