I was born into a city where housing was affordable. But I've grown up into one where it was not. What has gone wrong in London over the last 35 years? And where is it going in the future? . My new book, Homesick, tells that story. Out Sept 25

RT @OlympicHomes_AG: @PeteApps Thanks for sharing Pete, we think it’s time @getliving made affected leaseholders an offer to purchase our l….

London's Olympic legacy - it's going to cost £411.1m to fix fire safety defects in the East Village housing in the Olympic Park. For residents in these homes (many of them shared owners sold an 'affordable' housing product), it has been years of misery with no end in sight.

RT @fbunational: #WeRemember the six people who lost their lives at the Lakanal House fire, 16 years ago today. Today, 3,400 residential….

But we are definitively entering a new era: a non-negligible amount of social rented housing being built, and RtB chopped back to being (probably) fairly insignificant, especially in high value areas. This is not as different as some people might have hoped, but it is different.

I also do wonder how that grant rate is going to stack up in a real world where build costs are vast and debt is more expensive than it used to be. I look forward to seeing the prospectus - I'm not sure it will add up quite as well as ministers hope.

The grant to social housing is significant but not transformative. 18,000 a year would be the high since 2012, but lower than every year since WWII otherwise. So it's an end to the austerity era, but absolutely not a return to the golden age.

Clearly, the Right to Buy thing is a bit of a fudge - they want to scrap it outright, but they don't want the negative media which comes with that. Which is hardly bold policy making, but is still a step forward.

Flurry of housing reforms from Labour today, include sort of scrapping Right to Buy without actually scrapping it, and the announcement of 180,000 new social homes over 10 years through the grant programme.

It's hard to still find any of the news from Gaza shocking, but the details in this report are just unspeakable: .

RT @robbins_glyn: Last orders!. @homes4alluk.@DCHcampaign.@56aInfoshop.@PeteApps.@MunicipalDreams.@jeremycorbyn. Celebrating 10 Years Since….

More detail here:

What can you do about all this? It's hard to say. But whatever the answer is, it starts with continuing to care about this story and remembering it - even as the film drops out of the Netflix top 10 and viewers' memory

In terms of accountability - the criminal investigation is progressing, but desperately slowly. 58 individuals have been interviewed under caution, but trials won't start until mid-2027 at the earliest. And real financial penalties have not been implemented.

Social housing reform has seen a new regulator, a beefed up Ombudsman and new legal duties (forthcoming) to fix serious disrepair promptly. But what there isn't yet is a platform for residents to organise and be listened to - either locally or nationally

The Grenfell fire killed residents with disabilities at a far higher rate than any other category of person. But recommendations to implement personal evacuation plans for residents of high rises were rejected by the last government, and partially rejected by the current one

We still rely on stay put as the only meaningful fire strategy at most high rise buildings. The calls of the first phase of the inquiry to put measures in place for a "Plan B" have not been picked up by government or industry. Most blocks don't have communal fire alarms.

While there are new legal requirements for fire door checks, there is still a legacy problem with doors sold before the Grenfell Tower fire which don't meet the minimum standards, and unsafe doors are still sold. Fire door failure was a major contributor to deaths at the tower.

Dangerous buildings extend beyond cladding - there are serious concerns about (for example) combustible timber frames with improper fire stopping and legacy concrete buildings at risk of progressive collapse

In opposition, Labour promised a major effort to address this - including a taskforce assigned to prioritise and fix buildings. In power, it has adopted a much more limited approach - the same strategy as the Conservatives followed with additional threats to building owners.

Dangerous cladding - while most of the tall buildings with the same material as Grenfell have had it removed, an estimated 10,000 others still have dangerous facades of other types, causing misery for residents