A group of UK housing associations are proposing a ‘Homes For Heroes’ housing initiative modelled on the social housing drive following World War I. Banging pots in appreciation daily or once a week is probably well enough received. But what a meaningful reward an affordable home would be for underpaid health industry and care industry workers.1
Let us hope that the reward will be based on social housing built to the post World War I standards. Much of that housing is still going strong.
Let us hope those homes can also be built as permanent social housing, not available to be sold out of the social housing community under such as Right-To-Buy, that has so decimated social housing stock in the UK.
Nor, hopefully, would the homes be social housing which reverts to private market pricing after 30 years, as is financed through schemes such as the US Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC).
For more on this praiseworthy initiative, read more in Construction News: Housing Associations Call For Offsite ‘Homes For Heroes’ Pipeline
Footnotes
- See this Canadian story about wage levels in care homes: COVID-19: Nursing Home Care — A Tale Of Two Provinces
