The Green Party pledges 20,000 homes for Greater Manchester – but is it realistic?

From the streets of Hulme, Greater Manchester’s housing problems are glaringly obvious. Standing here, the glass skyscrapers towering above the region come into view. Many of these buildings went up thanks to loans from taxpayers.

From the streets of Hulme, Greater Manchester’s housing problems are glaringly obvious. Standing here, the glass skyscrapers towering above the region come into view. Many of these buildings went up thanks to loans from taxpayers.

But to live in such a place requires stumping up rent upwards of £2,000 a month according to several listings on property websites. For many people in Greater Manchester, that’s not far away from a monthly salary.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people across the region are sitting on housing registers, desperately waiting for a home to call their own, including here in Hulme.

To address the disconnect, the Green Party are proposing a ‘revolutionary’ solution.

Their summary of Greater Manchester’s housing problem is something many in the region may recognise: “The economy is ostensibly thriving on paper, while people aren’t thriving. People here are being left behind.”

“Rents are going through the roof,” says Geraldine Coggins, a Green Party councillor who is hoping to become the next Greater Manchester mayor.

Coggins, a councillor in Trafford, is leading a roundtable discussion on housing at NIAMOS in Hulme, described as a ‘radical arts’ centre.

The Green Party have pledged to deliver a housing ‘revolution’ across Greater Manchester. They want to build 10,000 new homes, and refurbish another 10,000 to bring them back into use.

A new body would be set up to deliver this – Homes for Greater Manchester. The homes would be rented at local housing allowance rates, but they wouldn’t be social homes, which would be at risk of being sold under the Right to Buy scheme.

Coggins is joined at the housing roundtable by Green Party MP Hannah Spencer, who brought along her greyhound Judy, Councillor Thirza Amina Asanga-Rae, who represents the Moss Side ward at Manchester council, her daughter Zenobia Asanga, a graduate from Ardwick, and Sally Casey, a resident.

If the set-up feels a little staged, the stories shared around the table do not.

A number of ‘horrendous’ experiences are shared of living in overcrowded homes, mouldy walls and ceilings, and the ‘huge difficulty’ getting on the property ladder.

Councillor Asanga-Rae opened up about a previous situation she was in, telling the group: “I lived in a property that was overcrowded, it was a two-bedroom house, I gave up my two bedrooms to the children, and so I slept on the sofa for about five years.

“Coupled with that, the house was riddled with infestation. There was black mould, and a number of leaks, to the point where the ceiling fell on my head in the kitchen.”

Similar problems like this are faced by tens of thousands of people across Greater Manchester every day, as the Local Democracy Reporting Service has reported on extensively.

Councillor Geraldine Coggins says the housing system is ‘broken’ for many people in the region. After listening to the discussion, it is hard to disagree.

But whether the Green Party’s plan to create 20,000 new homes across Greater Manchester in the next decade is realistic is another matter.

Quizzed on the cost of creating the homes, Councillor Coggins doesn’t have the figure to hand. After the interview, her team estimated that £4bn would be needed.

This money would come from a ‘combination of funding’, they say, including central government grants and borrowing from public lenders.

There’s slightly more certainty over where the homes could be built. Coggins ruled out putting any of the 10,000 on green belt land, saying it would be done ‘without carving up previous green spaces’.

Building on the green belt has been a longstanding criticism of Greater Manchester’s current development plan, known as Places for Everyone.

Pushed on exactly where the 10,000 new homes proposed by the Greens would be built, Councillor Coggins says a process would take place to ‘find parcels of brownfield land’, working with the ten councils of Greater Manchester to do this.

The plans are no doubt ambitious. But are they realistic?

Councillor Coggins replies: “These are fully researched plans, half of it is about buying up existing homes, because people can’t wait.

“We know how long it takes to find those spaces, to apply for planning permission to get the finance together, this is a well-thought through plan written by experts, so the buying of the supply of housing is a crucial part of it, because it means that we’re not using up green belt.

“We are taking some of that housing that is broken, and we’re fixing it and bringing it into public use as soon as possible.”

The Greens are also critical of the Manchester Housing Investment Loans Fund, which has loaned public cash to skyscraper developers in the city, attracting new residents to central Manchester.

Andy Burnham’s former office, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, recently won a court case about how it decided to loan some of this cash to one particular property developer.

But the scheme has been criticised by the Greens for lending public money for schemes with ‘non-existent affordable housing’.

If elected mayor, Coggins says she would ‘not hand over cash for luxury flats’ and pledges ‘much stricter lending rules’ for public loans.

There’s a moment of comic relief during the interview, when Hannah Spencer’s dog Judy gives out a loud thump when plonking herself on the floor.

After checking Judy is okay, the Gorton and Denton MP took the microphone and added: “There are examples across Greater Manchester where private developers have found there is money to be made in converting disused spaces like office blocks.

“There are spaces that are no longer used for their original purpose and have been turned into homes. Whether that’s been done well enough, because it’s for private profit, is another question.

“But that’s another option that we need to be looking at.”

Councillor Asanga-Rae said: “There are up to nearly 13,000 empty homes that have not been brought back into use, so in essence the properties are there, just to make Geraldine’s mission to achieve this achievable.

“But as Hannah said, there’s also empty buildings, I know a number of Sure Start buildings that were shut down, abandoned, and left.

“They may need a roof being put back on, but that’s a lot easier and cost-effective than the longer game which is building from scratch. So it is achievable.”

There’s no doubt that Greater Manchester is in a housing crisis, like many other parts of the country too. It’s a debate which comes up weekly in town halls across the region.

The topic will feature heavily in the race to become Andy Burnham’s successor as mayor, and candidates all need plans which voters can get behind.

To many people in Greater Manchester, there’s no bigger issue.