Jeremy Corbyn has suggested the state should take control of 8,000 empty properties and give them to the homeless.
The Labour leader said he would identify “deliberately” vacant properties and hand them over.
Shelter said that last April 281,000 people were living in temporary accommodation in Britain. A further 21,300 were in single homeless hostels or social services housing, while 4,500 were sleeping rough.
Asked what he would do on homelessness, Mr Corbyn told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “Immediately purchase 8,000 properties across the country to give immediate housing to those people that are currently homeless. At the same time require local authorities to build far more.
“We would give local authorities the power to take over deliberately kept vacant properties. When you have, in the middle of an area where there is a lot of housing stress, many people rough sleeping, you get some luxury, glossy, glistening block built, sold off-plan to long-distance overseas investors who may buy and sell it before it’s even built, well, hang on, let’s look at the social priorities here. Many people are homeless, many people are living in overcrowded accommodation, many middle class families’ children cannot leave home because they cannot raise the deposit for a private rented flat, have no chance of buying and no chance of a council property.”
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Andrew Bridgen, a Tory MP, said that MPs’ flats should be used for the homeless for the parts of the year they are unoccupied. “I am happy to allow homeless people to use my taxpayer-funded flat when I am not in parliament, as long as all other MPs agree to give up their flats to alleviate the homeless problem. Surely Labour MPs will welcome this sensible move. Why confiscate private property when taxpayer-funded accommodation is available.”
Mr Corbyn also said yesterday that the best thing about capitalism was that it could be challenged. Asked whether it had got anything right, he said: “Well, it does invest, mainly for its own benefit. But it does of course get challenged. Isn’t that what social movements are about, isn’t that what trade unions are about? Isn’t that what our democracy is about?”