Vince Cable, their deputy leader, claimed the measure was `the prudent thing to do' given the `absolutely dreadful' short-term economic outlook.
He said: "Manchester has blocks of new flats that [developers] can't sell. The market has fallen through the floor.
"I am suggesting social landlords - councils and housing associations - should be given the freedom to buy up empty properties developers can't sell and use it for social housing for people in housing need, such as the homeless. There will be a lot more of them with repossessions."
Referendum
Mr Cable also said giving the people of Greater Manchester a referendum on congestion charging was the `sensible and democratic' way forward and denied his party was split on the issue.
Lib Dem-controlled Stockport is opposed to plans for a peak-hour charge in return for £3bn in public transport improvements, while their counterparts in Rochdale are in favour.
Mr Cable said: "Our councils are close to the people they represent and understandably they reflect their feelings about it.
"We all very much want to see big public transport improvements going in. The question is about how you fund it."
Unimaginative
He said the government's 'congestion charge or nothing' attitude was `seriously unimaginative', pointing out American cities had raised huge sums by charging a voluntary levy on businesses that would benefit from proposed public transport improvements.
Mr Cable also denied his party had compromised their principles by teaming up with the Conservatives to oust Labour from control of Greater Manchester's fire and transport authorities.
The decision has left the transport authority with an anti-congestion charge Tory chairman - Trafford's Matt Colledge - at a time when consultation on the charge is about to begin. Lib Dem Paul Shannon now chairs the fire authority.
"It [the deal] is not opportunistic at all," he said.
Click on the link on the right to watch a video of this interview.
What do you think? Have your say. Tweet
Comments
Login or Register to comment
So i work 50+ hours a week....just to survive , and your going to give some scum bags (i know not all homeless people are though) a brand new city centre pad , to trash?
This guy needs his head testing!!!!!
Why not give the hard working people of manchester a reduction on extortionate rents they charge,and give the homeless our houses on the outskirts?
Another alternative is to evict the family of fleecers in the Buckingham and Windsor palaces, and provide a home for a good number of the homeless.
I agree with him that something should be done.
Someone I know has a good apartment in Castlefield. He bought it five years ago, it has been up for sale for eighteen months at the price he paid for it. Number of viewings is one in all that time. The place nextdoor to him has been empty for one year after the last tenant moved out and out of 100 apartments in the block thirty are empty.
Yet there are seven new developments being built very close by.
The original developer in phase three is virtually giving them away now which has brought down the price per square foot meaning my relation will have to reduce his apartment to 35% below what he paid to compete, thus meaning he is negative equity and his mortgage goes up by 48% in four weeks.To cap it all off the flat management company forgot to pay three years of electricity bills totalling £120k and all of the owners have to stump up this money within two years. Refusal to pay for their mistake was met with threat of court action against them by the management company!
Why do the council keep on allowing these places to be built?
I have supported the Lib Dems for years, but Vince Cable comes out with some twaddle at times.
The so-called posh flats are generally not for families. Most are smaller than a terraced house. The service charges can be over £300 per month. I know because mine is! Putting single homeless people in flats with rents of £700 a month and service fees of say £300 a month, is not good value for taxpayers!
The council and govt should be investing some of the profit they have made from these developments on social housing.
Oh, what a great idea! NOT!
So lets put people in expensive flats, people who are not going to care about what they do to the place because they won't be paying for them.
And just how will these people be removed from these flats when the time comes? The laws with regard to this kind of thing are usually heavily biased toward the tenant. Then, of course, there are their sacred human rights.
God help us if the Lib Dems ever came to power - they do come up with some tosh!
Orb, they don't need to be homeless to trash the flats. In the development I am speaking about there were always debt collectors coming round chasing unpaid bills, utilities being cut off, tenants doing a runner, tenants subletting flats and car parking spaces, property being trashed etc.
These were all by what one would term young professionals.
It's a nice development, sorry was, but so many people in there are finacially in the wotsit due to overdevelpoment.
Audenshaw Bob - the council give permission for them to be built out of sheer greed. The fact is the council cost for servicing these types of flats is 75% lower than a typical housing estate. Yet the rates they generate per sq foot are three times what a suburban terraced house raises. It is all about money. Why do you think that Manchester was able to keep its rates rise lower this year than other greater manchester councils. Its certainly not because they are more efficient. The city centre apartments generate over £40m in rates for the city and that money wasn't there 7 years ago.
As ever with LibDems, a good idea in principle but not realistic.
I pay an awful lot of money to live in my house, a nice house in an area that coukld be much better. I work hard to pay the mortgage, and even harder to feed the family and run my car! And then the LibDems want my taxes to pay for expensive posh city centre apartments for the homeless? Seems fair doesn't it?
I do agree that homelessness in a civilised society should not even exist and the government should do more to help these people. And if they wanted to, they would. For example, just look around some of the more deprived area of Manchester and count the number of boarded up terraced houses, surely these would do the job?
Manchester Dale, service charge of £300 a month? May I ask what for? I can understand £30 a month for flat but 300 sounds like you have an on call butler or something!
Yep put some wino next to a couple who have just paid £200,000 for their appartment ,oh yea i can see that working?I knew this would happen if you had read my posting from early last year i predicted this happening.
I agree with one on this post that we have a royal family with empty property all over britain and at the cost of the tax/ratepayers of britain.Its time the royals property was reclaimed and used for the good of the british people rather than a waste of taxpayers money.Lets come into the 21st century
Guten Tag, my relative pays £151 and £70 £80 on topr for the electricy bill of £120 that the management compnay forgot to pay.
The management company budgetted for the communal electricity bill, collected the money from everyone, didn't pay the bill for a few years, spent the money elsewhere then lumped the bill on everyone's monthly charge.
They said that they had already paid towards the electricity once so the management firm should stump the bill. My relative refused to pa and the management company wrote to his maortgage lender to get the money and issued a beach of contract on him and threatened bailiffs so he had to pay! Meanwhile the management company i sin the clear!
There
That should have read £80 towards £120,000 electricity bill.
"Why not give the hard working people of manchester a reduction on extortionate rents they charge,and give the homeless our houses on the outskirts? "
Who is this they who are charging extortionate rent? If your talking about Manc City Council - the rent is relatively cheap for what you get. Not that the council own many house now as most of the estate has been flogged to housing associations but they too are reasonable.
If you're talking about private land lords then they have the right to charge what they want but if you think you're paying too much negociate because tenants have the upper hand at the moment
The problem is going through the planning process takes years. When the developers started submitting these plans the economic was in a good shape and the demand was high.
That is no longer the case and people are starting to realise how poor value for money these appartments are.
£250k for a city centre 2 bed pokey little appartment with plasterboard walls or £200k for a 3 bed semi in the subburbs with your own drive, garden and good local amenities - what would you choose?
I have always found it amusing that after the IRA bomb we decided to build all these appartments out of glass. What happens if we get bombed again?
Giving them to the homeless is not exactly going to help the developers but the prices do need to get real and come down to more realistic levels or the empty posh appartments will be viewed the same as the 70s concrete tower blocks in a few years
I knew this was coming! Now lets see what happens to the Beetham Tower! Hahaha!
alvin, you need a hug. come on, don't resist, let me hug you. you'll feel much better, i promise. come to marc...
Mr Manchester, " Another alternative is to evict the family of fleecers in the Buckingham and Windsor palaces, and provide a home for a good number of the homeless.". excellent!!!.
All flats in England are sold on a leasehold basis
That means that the leaseholders are effectively tenants for the duration of the lease which can be 99 Years 125 Years or in some cases 999 Years.
A leaseholder pays service charges which are supposed to pay towards repairs of the flats some landlords operate a "Sinking Fund" which is part of the service charge and is is used for Capital works ie if the lift was going to be replaced or the whole roof etc this would normally come from the Sinking Fund.
Alot of leaseholders are genuinely shocked when they discover they are in actual fact tenants and have in actual fact purchased a tenancy agreement but with the difference that they are responsible for paying for repairs on top of their mortgage repayments etc.
With a leasehold property the leaseholders really are at the mercy of their landlord who has full control over who carries out repairs etc.
Leasehold arcs back to the 10th Century and is still alive and well in the 21st.
In short leasehold is a complete nightmare and there are plenty of lawyers who do not full understand how antiquated this form of property ownership is.
There are also alot of new build houses sold on a leasehold basis it doesn't only apply to flats.
Evening Star, interesting information!
I own a flat here in the Netherlands in a very nice little place called Delft.
The flat I own is Freehold; all the tenants collectively own the building and the ground. We don’t have a management company (we have a committee who controls the funds and employ the gardener, cleaners for communal areas etc, directly. If they don’t do a good job, we fire them and get better ones in).
It works really well as a system.
As for the new sky scrapers of Manchester, every time I go home (twice a month or so) I can’t help feeling these are 'white elephants' and follies.
Unlike a lot of countries, we the British still don’t have an apartment living mentality! In London yes, because there is no ground space for houses, however, up North, I still believe we prefer houses as a whole I can see a lot of financial pressures on the horizon for those who paid 250K plus for a flat!
Cheers...........
please no;
I moved from south manchester to the city centre to get away from people in social housing who never seemed to have to work, so stayed up getting out of it on drink or drugs all night, dumped rubbish all over the place and stole anything that wasnt nailed down
i'm going homeless i want an apartment in town hahaha
Oh dear,you just don't get it do you?
These flats will be left empty,the Con charge will come in and people will be clamouring to live in the city centre to avoid paying it.
The price of flats will go through the roof(excuse the pun!),developers are already putting pressure on the council to bring the charge in.
What a total fool. Manchester has a hugh rental market. Longterm investors are still buying flats to rent out. I am sure people who bought these flats would be pleased to see homeless riffraff moving in. Yes there is a property downturn but it doesent mean that there isnt still house and apartment sales.
citycentre, was that Manchester or Liverpool?