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Oxford is one of the least affordable cities in the UK. A big part of the cost of living crisis in our city is our broken housing system which is pushing people into precarity, poverty and homelessness.
The Green Party believes that access to affordable, secure and decent housing is a human right. Nobody should be left unhoused or have insecure accommodation. Local government has an important role to play in tackling the housing crisis – but many of the solutions require intervention from national government too.
As a result, the Green Party’s commitments to the people of Oxford take two forms.
1. Ensuring Oxford City Council takes every step it can to address the housing crisis in our city.
2. Tirelessly lobbying national government for changes to the housing sector – including through giving new powers to local councils to properly address the crisis.
A Green Party run Oxford would:
● Introduce an Oxford Living Rent to promote affordability in the private rented sector. This would build on the pioneering working of the Oxford Living Wage which has increased the pay of hundreds of workers across our city.
● Establish a council-backed letting agency in order to deliver fairer rents, more secure contracts and improvements in the sustainability of the housing stock.
● Lobby central government to give councils the power to introduce private sector rent controls and to end the right to buy policy which has hollowed out council housing stock.
● Significantly increase the proportion of social and affordable housing in developments that take place in the city, and ensure they are accessible for disabled people – including through safe and secure storage spaces for mobility aids.
● Support the purchase of long-term vacant properties for social housing, backed by compulsory purchase orders if needed.
● Work to improve the speed, efficiency and quality of repairs in council owned housing.
● Ensure that new homes built in Oxford are as sustainable as possible – with Passive House as standard.
● Ensure new developments in the city are prioritised for housing, and for new housing projects to be as dense as possible with effective local infrastructure and amenities – including good access to green space.
● Utilise council owned brownfield sites to build substantial amounts of affordable zero-carbon housing, in order to reverse the trend of more employment spaces than homes being built.
● Support the continuation of the ‘Housing First’ model which has proven highly effective at reducing homelessness and moving people on to long-term, sustainable accommodation.
● Ensure that no families are housed in hotels for Temporary Accommodation provision which is extremely expensive for the council and inappropriate for residents with children, while significantly reducing the use of hotels for Temporary Accommodation overall.
● Provide more funding for organisations that offer ‘safety net’ services for people in precarious housing situations.
● Improve residential moorings based on the Collaborative Housing ‘Community Led Moorings’ report.
● Lobby central government to increase the powers the city council has to stop the expansion of short term lets which put increased pressure on housing in the city.
● Lobby central government to extend the powers to introduce a tourist tax – currently held by metropolitan mayors – to councils, in order to bring in huge amounts of revenue to the council to deliver better services for Oxford.
● Strengthen council approaches to private housing, with a focus on promoting better conditions for tenants, ensuring homes are maintained and well-insulated and taking stronger action against rogue landlords.