UK Cuts Public Housing Funding by 60%
I have been spending most of my spare time meeting with and talking to owners and developers. I’m happy to report that most of the market seems to feel the market is turning for the better. I’ll elaborate on this in my next blog post.
On another front, I read an article this past week about how the rest of the world is trimming their federal budgets. One startling bit of news was the dramatic cuts in public housing funding in the UK. The 2011-12 budget has been slashed by 60%.
This is putting a tremendous amount of pressure on families who are in the UK’s subsidized housing system. Public apartments are closing and there are very few alternatives in the densely populated cities.
I mention this because the UK is not the only government forced to make hard cuts. Almost every country in Europe has been struggling to determine where to cut.
Here on the other side of the pond we are approaching it in a different way. Yes, we are seeing some services cut, but HUD and HUD properties have not been tagged for the chopping block. We are are however certain that Fannie/Freddie/FHA and associated GSE’s will be trimmed and phased out ultimately. Even the mighty US postal service is changing. They are eliminating thousands of post office locations by not renewing their leases.
I can’t help but wonder when we will see some of the US housing programs revamped or slimmed down. It might be a logical conclusion given the fact that cuts to defense, Medicare and other US entitlement programs seem to be the last cuts our citizens want to see.
With an abundance of apartment vacancies, vacant foreclosed homes and growing REO portfolios, cuts to providing and subsidizing housing may be an easy cut here as well.
As Always. Open to your thoughts and comments.
John
