Eric Pickles has today announced a new initiative to allow unscrupulous landlords to cash in yet again on the housing shortage. Disgusied as a measure that allows ordinary families to convert their garages to "granny flats" and ease the housing shortage by moving the elderly out of houses that are too large for them, the devil, as usual, is in the detail. Pickles measure calls for making it easier to adapt garages and "other outbuildings." In other words, having looked at the huge number of garages that have been let out to migrant workers, the Tories have found a way to legitimise this and cash in on it at the same time. The scam, of course, has been couched in cosy and warm phrases intended to appeal to the middle-classes such as the idea that these outbuildings "could also be used to accommodate young people looking to make their first step on to the housing ladder." But the message is clear. Unable to countenance the idea of building proper houses for people, scared that house prices might fall and frightened that an expansion of the housing stock would undermine the profits of landlords, Pickles is determined to squeeze as many of the peasants into overcrowded slum housing as possible.
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