Election Pledge: Genuinely Affordable Housing

If elected I will;

Lobby Tower Hamlets Council to set up a compulsory Landlords Register to identify rogue landlords, affirm good ones and ensure that all sign up to a Tower Hamlets Good Practice for Landlords register (as in Newham).
As part of the above ensure that all renters are protected from losing their deposit for fallacious reasons.
Promote the definition of affordability for home ownership in Tower Hamlets as the ‘median point of average local wages in Tower Hamlets’ and thus challenge the present definition of 85% the market rate.
Organise with local groups and institutions in the constituency to persuade Canary Wharf plc to review their development plans for the ’Northern Quarter’.
Instead of developing another anonymous block of ‘luxury housing’ Canary Wharf plc to work with the proposed Green Assembly to create a Garden City where 35% of the homes are private and thus 65% are ‘affordable’ for Tower Hamlets residents (already on the waiting list) through a Community Land Trust model or similar.
All profits from the private homes and any retail or office accommodation in the proposed Garden City to be donated to a local ‘Community Wealth Fund’ for the benefit of Poplar and Limehouse institutions and residents – in perpetuity.
Ensure that such a generous move by Canary Wharf plc is seen as a world leader in reciprocity to the poorer neighbours who have been effected by years of disruption as well as the alarming growth in inequality and fracturing of family life and community cohesion.

If elected, the Green Party will;

Ensure that the Green New Deal investment in housing will reduce climate emissions, tackle fuel poverty and provide genuinely affordable housing (see above for definition).
Improve the insulation of every home in the UK and ensure end the housing crisis by creating enough affordable homes – including 100,000 new council homes a year.
Ensure that work on our homes, businesses and public buildings will create quality Living Wage jobs in every part of the UK as we shift to a zero carbon economy.
Make sure that all new developments relocated and designed to ensure that residents do not need cars but are close to shops and transport links.
Roll out solar panels and other forms of domestic energy generation, giving a million homes a year the means to generate a proportion of the energy they use. By 2030 this will mean that 10 million homes will be able to generate their own renewable energy.
Change the planning system to incentivise renovation, extension and improvement of existing buildings to reduce the use of steel, concrete, cladding and finishes which produce large amounts of carbon in their manufacture.