let's be honest if you're under 35
housing in the UK is a joke not even a
joke a dumpster fire houses are insanely
expensive to buy and for renters but I
don't need to tell you hashtag rent your
rent was trending this week on Twitter
and you know what this problem runs way
deeper than you think the entire system
is broken so let's talk about it and
whether this election will actually make
a difference okay there's a very simple
problem with housing supply turns out
though it's incredibly complicated to
fix a very basic level the UK doesn't
have enough houses and with a growing
demand for such short supply houses get
really expensive the average house in
the UK these days is over 200 grand
that's a whopping 173 percent increase
on the average price in the 1990s and
wages haven't kept up rising only 19%
houses being so expensive drags rent
prices up to an expensive rent has
another knock-on effect of making it
really hard to save up to buy a house so
you can see the whole system is working
against itself
no wonder one in four young adults are
thought to be living at home with their
parents it's been happening so much
they've been given a name
boomerang Millennials nothing mum so the
obvious question how can we not have
enough houses let's just build some more
well that's the party's solution in
England anyway as pretty much everyone
is promising to build hundreds of
thousands of homes to build build we
build but that's so many for context if
you include every home that's
each year social and private we still
hardly ever cracked 150,000 luckily our
party leaders are always on building
sites conveniently surrounded by cameras
there's a trend with broken promises and
housing take the Conservatives in 2050
their manifesto promised 200,000 new
homes for first-time buyers these
starter homes were aimed at people under
40 who could buy them at a 20% discount
out of 200,000 how many did they manage
I don't have the exact numbers for it's
easy to remember it's zero
you built none under that plug okay that
zero is disputed but at most it's 16 and
the labor led Welsh government has also
been criticised 59 council houses in
Wales last year and yet you expect us to
believe 100,000 held but held back by a
Tory government well he would make that
excuse and in fact it was only 57 houses
getting on the property ladder has
always been a massive priority for
people in the UK so back in the 80s
Margaret Thatcher set up a scheme called
right to buy where people living in
council houses could buy them a huge
discount and will be able to buy it at a
price that one-third below market value
sounds good and for those who bought it
was great thing is we didn't build
enough council houses to replace the
ones that were being sold off so now
we're running out that's the thing with
housing you patch up one issue you
create another I told you it was
complicated and it doesn't help that one
topic keeps distracting the party
leaders even ten feet above a building
site
[Music]
there's another problem you've got to
build houses in the right places sounds
obvious but you need to build houses
where people want to live lots of young
people have been moving to big cities in
recent years and basically if there are
more of them there there's less supply
of housing and costs can go up the other
issue well this is awkward
it's about your mum and dad's house so
housing relies on moves it's basically a
giant chain but if moves slowed down and
people are blocking up some houses then
there aren't enough of the right size to
go around and some people say that
homeowners who tend to be older are
putting off moving because of brexit
uncertainty and prices stalling so that
can have a huge impact on the rest of
the chain okay let us give you an actual
example Birmingham is a city where the
housing system is breaking hard house
prices are up 45% in the last 10 years
this city has a very young population
and there's a big housing shortage there
are around 13,000 people on the
council's waiting list add to that the
fact that the population here is
expected to grow by quite a lot over the
next ten years and you can see that
homes are a really really precious
resource for a lot of us buying just
isn't realistic in England private
renting has doubled in the last twenty
years over a third of 25 to 34 year olds
rent privately and because there's a
shortage the quality of flats suffers so
it's no surprise that housing is a huge
voter priority and parties are chasing
it in power tenants and control rents
we're the party that actually builds the
homes that this country needs renters
rights are really big in the run-up to
this election the Tories want to
introduce a deposit that you can
transfer between different properties
but labour once you introduce rent caps
on prices the Lib Dems want to give out
loans to under 30s renting out their
first place but the Greens want to set
up something they call an affordable
living rat
housing law is different between Wales
Scotland and England because it's
devolved renters actually have more
rights in Scotland than they do in
England if you were to come and live say
somewhere like here in Glasgow when you
get a tenancy out there's no end date so
you can stay there for as long as you
want as long as you don't break the
rules and your rent will only be
increased once a year and you can
challenge that if you're not happy and
when renting goes really wrong the
consequences can be so severe in England
a quarter of homelessness is caused by a
tenancy ending you know I don't know
what I'm gonna be sleeping from that
tonight you know I mean you know I might
I might find out that it's there
somewhere for a few days but then again
after that it's doing it all over again
extremely hard because doing the a law
was it stressful it is it's hard to
focus on doing your schoolwork in
revision during the day when you're
worrying about where you're gonna be
sleepin tonight
housing charity shelter estimates three
hundred and twenty thousand people are
homeless in Britain so whatever promises
party's make to build houses
just remember it's so much harder to
turn that into an actual reality for
some people who can't afford to buy and
can't bear to rent it's time to look at
drastic alternative --zz hi I'm Claire
and I'm Aubrey and we live in a shipping
container frankly a shipping container
sounds less dangerous than Boris
Johnson's house someone had dropped a
cabbage yet you know there's very short
bits of glass and and yeah to be honest
whoever wins this election the party's
track records suggest not enough houses
are gonna get built
I do think I'll ever be able to get on
the housing ladder based on my own
income and my own salary month-on-month
you you're pretty much chewing up all of
your wages just to keep a roof over yet
so there's every chance that what
they're promising just won't happen and
as we've seen housing policy always gets
really complicated so be wary this
election of flashy overly simple housing
promises
until next time see ya
you