Here’s 3 ways in which the UK housing sector is completely and utterly f**ked.
1. Home Ownership.
Do you ever get the feeling that life just isn’t as fair as it used to be?
20 years ago, 65% of 25-34 year olds on middle incomes owned their own home.
Today, it’s just 27% and falling.
Mean house prices are 152% higher today than they were in the mid-1990s, adjusting for
inflation. The consequence? The average house price for a young person today is around 8
times their household income, compared to 4 times 20 years ago.
---And with up to half our incomes going on rent, it will take millennials an average
of 19 years to save for a deposit to buy a house - compared to an average of 3 years
back in the 1980s.
In comparison, 1 in 6 baby boomers owns a second home - meaning that not only is there
generational concentration of wealth, but the buy-to-let market means that the pay packets
of the young are lining the pockets of wealthy older people.
2. ---Housing benefits. Who do you reckon is a bigger drain on the state: unemployed
people, or enterprising, property-owning private landlords?
Wrong. It’s landlords. Just 1% of UK government welfare spending goes towards unemployment
entitlements. But 25% of welfare spending goes on housing benefits, which are now part
of the Universal Credit system.
4.2 million people claim housing benefit, which is more than any other kind of benefit.
Last year, an estimated 21.9 billion pounds was spent on making sure that people in the
UK could keep a roof over their heads by supplementing their rent.
This year, it’s predicted that over £10 billion of the housing benefit spend will
be going towards supplementing rents of tenants in the private sector.
So that’s over £10 billion pounds of taxpayer dosh feathering the nests of private landlords
instead of being spent increasing the supply of actually affordable housing.
Because that’s the real issue. Housing benefit doesn’t cover rents in 95% of the country.
The gap between welfare support and costs is more than £100 a month in England and
more than £900 in central London. This means that thousands of families are either forced
to cover the shortfall between rent and income through increasing personal debt, or are pushed
into homelessness
3. ---Which then puts them at the mercy of the Temporary Accommodation industry Also
known as the Chokey of the UK housing sector.
In the last 5 years, the combination of benefits cuts, soaring rents and a nationwide cost
of living crisis has led to a massive increase in the number of people declared statutory
homeless. According to the House of Commons library, there’s been a 77% increase in
the number of households placed in temporary accommodation since 2010, when the Lib Dem-Tory
coalition came into power and ruined the lives of basically everyone who wasn’t a millionaire.
The latest data shows that over 125,000 children are currently in temporary or emergency housing
---Between 2018 and 2019, £1.1bn was spent on B&Bs, hostels and other temporary shelter
- 30% of which was spent on emergency B&Bs, despite there being a near universal consensus
that these are the worst form of accommodation for children and families.
Council spending on emergency B&Bs has gone up by 147% in recent years, while the number
of units has increased by only 32%. In short, the homelessness crisis has created the perfect
conditions for unscrupulous landlords to spike their prices, with the taxpayer footing the
bill.
More than 27,500 people are living in so-called “exempt accommodation”, meaning that their
full-rent is being paid by the taxpayer, but there aren’t any safeguards for standards
or safety governing the placement. “Exempt accommodation” is often used to house people
who are extremely vulnerable or have complex needs: domestic violence survivors, the long-term
homeless, and people with substance misuse issues. In a report released just this month,
one resident said
---“It was dirty, filthy – rats and all sorts. Really dangerous. Never saw a staff
member again after I got the keys. I stayed for about 10 days, then slept on a park bench
for two. I was sexually assaulted in that park and I was terrified, confused, the lot.”
Treating emergency and temporary accommodation as a commodity has created incentives for
the private sector to bleed the public purse dry - and people aren’t even getting decent