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To: maceng2 who wrote (786)	5/25/2005 4:57:49 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1417

Government housing plans under fire ananova.com Government plans to help first-time home buyers have come under fire from housing charities and economists. There were warnings that the new initiatives would simply benefit property speculators by stoking house prices. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott announced the release of three more former National Health Service sites to provide land for nearly 400 more cheap homes. However, plans to help 100,000 people buy a stake in their homes through shared equity schemes were attacked. Adam Sampson, director of the housing charity Shelter, said that the Government's top priority should be to increase the number of affordable homes for those most in need. "Instead, public money and public land is being used to subsidise the acquisition of personal wealth through home ownership," he said. "By creating more potential homeowners without substantially increasing the amount of homes available the Government is creating a 'black hole' of further house price inflation which will cancel out its own investment." Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, warned that the real beneficiaries of shared ownership schemes would be wealthy speculators. "It means house prices will be higher than they would be otherwise. The people who are likely to benefit from it in the end aren't those who are buying houses, but people who already own them," he said. "The message coming from this is that the Government wants to maintain the liquidity of the housing market by helping first-time buyers back in, and that of course makes housing something of a one-way bet for the sort of person who already owns £1 million worth of houses and is thinking of buying more on credit."