West End letters: affordable housing | cost of repairs | Cllr Philippa Roe | majority | empty | housing waiting lists

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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 12 June 2009

We are trying to increase the supply of affordable housing

• YOUR article (3,000 homes are sitting empty, June 5) sensationally claimed that housing waiting lists could be cut by a third if private sector empty homes were filled.
These homes are not owned or managed by the council and we also are not in a position where we can stop people owning a second property.
The majority of these homes are empty for a few months often for good reasons such as being vacant between lettings or because they are up for sale or being renovated.
What we do is to bring back long-term empty private sector homes into use to stop them becoming targets for squatters or vandals and also to increase the supply of affordable housing.
Owners struggling with the cost of repairs may be given a grant to transform run-down properties in return for them renting these homes to people in need of affordable housing.
Westminster also provides advice about renting, selling or leasing schemes run by the council or other organisations to landlords but will also take firm enforcement action if this approach fails.
We are doing everything we can to increase the supply of affordable housing in the city and work on the biggest council-house building programme London has seen for a generation is set to start at the end of this month.
Over the next four years Westminster City Council will build almost 500 homes on brownfield and under-used sites on existing estates to help ease chronic overcrowding and homelessness in the borough.
Cllr Philippa Roe
Cabinet Member for Housing
Westminster City Council

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld.
Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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