Housing & Homelessness

The private rental market is home to one fifth of the UK’s population, after rapid growth over the past two decades. Long regarded – and often dismissed – as a tenure for students and young single people, private tenants are now more likely to be aged over 35, and one in three has children.

Two trends have led us to this scenario. First, the lack of social housing for tenants on lower incomes – a result of the failure, by successive Governments, to replace council houses sold off under Right to Buy. And second, house prices rising out of the reach of middle-income households, particularly in London and the South East.

Uniting these factors was the rise of buy-to-let as a popular investment – it led to a large proportion of former Right to Buy homes ending up on the rental market (40% in London), while the spending power of speculators chasing capital gains in the property market priced out people who simply wanted a home.

The collapse in home ownership has animated much of the political response to this trend, with measures such as Help to Buy and the Stamp Duty surcharge on landlords designed to bolster first-time buyers’ position in the market. The number of people buying their first home is now nearly back at the pre-financial crisis level. But millions more, having paid expensive rents for years, have meagre savings as a result, with two thirds of private renters having none, meaning they face many more years in the same expensive tenure. Despite some efforts to address this, the Government still has a long way to go.

As well as being more expensive than other tenures, private rented homes are more likely to be unsafe, with 690,000 containing hazards such as leaks, faulty electrics and mould. While local councils have responsibility for enforcing safety standards, tenants are easily intimidated into not complaining in the first place by the threat of a no-fault eviction or rent hike.

Since 2015, local councils have been able to protect tenants in unsafe homes from retaliatory eviction, but budget cuts have limited their ability to make use of these powers. Generation Rent research estimates that only one in five such tenants get the protection to which they’re entitled.

Recent legislation has also made it easier for local councils to fine, and for tenants to sue and claim rent back from negligent landlords. But until tenants no longer face the threat of losing their home for exercising their right to a decent home, private renting will continue to be a second-class tenure.

Under Section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act, landlords can evict tenants without needing a reason. Not only does this allow the worst landlords to bully their tenants, it enables others to churn their properties to take advantage of rising local rents, and amateurs to sell up with a vacant property and no obligation to help the tenant find a new home.

While the vast majority of landlords value their tenants and want them to stay long term, the lack of legal certainty for the tenant makes private renting fundamentally precarious. Private tenants are more likely to worry they will have to move home in the next year, so it often feels like there is little point in investing time in your home or your community. As a result, private tenants are less likely to feel happy with how their home looks or know many of their neighbours than homeowners and social tenants.

During her time as Prime Minister, Theresa May recognised this and pledged to abolish Section 21 so that landlords must need a valid reason to take their property back. A consultation is under way, and it must remain a priority under Boris Johnson’s administration so that tenants and their children can enjoy a stable life that homeowners often take for granted.

But even with a stronger set of rights, private renters will still face high costs. A previous Conservative Government justified increasing private sector provision of housing by promising that Housing Benefit would “take the strain”. This doctrine was scrapped under austerity and now tenants receiving Housing Benefit find it is no longer covering the rent, being paid late, and is causing them to be rejected when searching for a new home. This is creating more hardship, which is manifesting itself in the courts, health service and the schools system.

The Government must recognise that helping people keep a roof over their head is an investment in society as a whole – stable homes mean stronger communities, personal wellbeing and a safe environment for children to flourish. To ensure that everyone can afford a place to live in, the government must put money towards a functional benefits system, but also – to bring down rents across the board – a programme of housebuilding. This will not only take the pressure off families at the breadline, but also boost the savings power of aspiring homeowners.

Dan Wilson Craw is the Director of Generation Rent. This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine On the home front. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. 

At the heart of the Homelessness Reduction Act was the desire to intervene in cases as early as possible, to provide vulnerable people and families with consistent, solid advice wherever they seek help, and to ensure that standards are maintained nationwide.

As a long serving London politician, I have seen people and families stuck in a vicious cycle of vulnerability, homelessness and powerlessness. People become homeless for any combination of reasons: ill health, loss of employment, addiction and family breakdown to name but a few. Once they find themselves sleeping in their car, on a park bench or in a shop doorway – even once – the cycle starts, and they have an almighty battle to get off the streets and into safe accommodation.

Aside from the obvious challenges, being homeless reduces life expectancy and leaves already vulnerable people exposed to abuse. Homeless people are attacked on the street on a sickeningly frequent basis and dehumanised by the day to day struggle of getting by and surviving.

Nationwide, there must be a gold standard for what advice people receive from local authorities. This was included within the Homelessness Reduction Act – so you can visit any Civic Centre or County Hall and receive the same guidance as if you were to approach a different local authority. It is important that vulnerable people do not get caught up in a postcode lottery and that standards are enforced across local housing departments.

I was careful not to create a Bill which could lead to rash interventions in the housing market as this, in turn, could have unintended consequences. The entire Homelessness Reduction Act was therefore built upon a solid research base with immeasurable scrutiny – by the government, the Housing, Communities and Local Government select committee, the Bill Committee and by stakeholders such as Crisis.

Besides extending the period ‘threatened with homelessness’ from 28 to 56 days, the Act places a duty on local authorities to prevent and relieve homelessness for all eligible applicants threatened with homelessness, regardless of priority need. It also introduces a new ‘duty to refer’ – which means that public services will need to notify a local authority if they come into contact with someone they think may be homeless or at risk of becoming so.

The National Housing Federation described the Act as “the biggest change to homelessness legislation in 40 years”. But we can do more. Beyond the Act we must examine how to increase the supply of good quality housing stock, while not burdening local authorities or housing associations, and ensuring developers stick to promises and crack on with new build completions. I have a few suggestions. Something which worries me is how we manage land. The transfer of land from public to private ownership usually takes the form of highest bid wins: not looking at what the prospective owner wants to do with the site, nor thinking of whether suitable and affordable housing will be placed there. Thus land in the immediate area spikes in price. This spike becomes the new norm and the cycle repeats. This is not a healthy or sustainable market.

This cycle affects the price of houses for prospective buyers and rental rates for new or existing tenants. Particularly in urban and suburban settings, as I see in Harrow East, people often struggle to make rent or mortgage payments as a result of land and property speculation. These pressures are particularly felt by those in private rented accommodation who hope to buy a property in the city.

My solution would be for planning permission to be sought before public land is sold for the type of residential development which the area requires, according to demand and factors such as the density of the local population. Local residents would be notified and consulted as part of the process. Then, once permission is granted, Homes England would contract a developer to see to the plans. Taxpayers need assurances that a council will not squander millions on such a procurement process, hence why Homes England should take the lead.

An incentive for local authorities to identify the public land which they own and to go to these lengths would be for the Treasury to design and implement a compensation scheme. This would not be a case of the Treasury granting several millions which an authority might waste, but rather giving a sum of money equal to the value of land which must be invested in public services. This compensation could apply to government departments, especially the Department of Health and the Ministry of Defence.

After the development of new homes on previously public land, the time comes to set rental rates or the sale price. These figures should be pegged to costs incurred by construction – materials, labour, and services – but in absolutely no way can the developer, or whomever leads this calculation, use land value when undertaking the task. It would be amoral given the nature of the proposed scheme and also lead to a significant price spike, denying many prospective buyers the chance to purchase a home.

I would insert a clause in rental agreements which would give any tenant who continuously occupies one of these properties on previously public land for ten years without break the right to buy at the market value at time of occupation. This new kind of rent to buy could be transformative and would certainly increase the supply of affordable housing.

Finally, Section 21 notices have a direct impact on tenants and landlords. Longer tenancy agreements should be available to tenants and must make clear how and when rents can or will be increased. However, we must remember that not all tenants want long-term tenancies. A pathway must remain open for landlords to evict tenants who consistently fail to pay rent or damage the property.

Housing and homelessness must be at the core of the new administration’s domestic agenda and that is why I took heart when the new Housing Secretary said “let’s build the homes our country needs and make home ownership a reality for this and future generations” – time is not on our side, and we must act swiftly.

Bob Blackman was an MP and member of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee. This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine On the home front. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Families come in all shapes and sizes. But all of them have one thing in common: they need a place to live. A place to grow, play, sleep and study. To do all the things that make families the bedrock of our society and the finest social institution that we have for progress, prosperity and social mobility.

Yet so often the debate about housing, both in London and elsewhere, is simply a numbers game: one hundred units here, 2,000 units there. Yet in our rush to increase overall numbers of homes – important though that is – we fail to pay enough attention to the types of homes we are building, and who they are for.

By default, the planning system tends to be skewed towards smaller housing units of one or two bedrooms. These are easier and cheaper for developers to build and will often provide the greatest return. They also help the bureaucratic numbercrunchers in public authorities demonstrate the maximum number of units being built towards their ever-increasing targets.

By contrast, the three- and fourbedroom homes that are suitable for families are generally much harder to get through the system. Even more so when those in authority actively seek to discourage them, such as in London with Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Mayor Khan has set a target to build 65,000 homes a year through his new development plan, called the London Plan. He has also been given £4.8 billion by central government to build 116,000 affordable homes. Yet his policies are failing to support larger family homes and do everything possible to reduce the size of new homes. His housing strategy has abolished targets for affordable family homes, set by his predecessor, which means that there is no incentive for public housing funds to be invested in family-sized homes, nor for developers to deliver them.

Meanwhile, the London Plan actively encourages the demolition of existing family homes and their redevelopment as blocks of small flats, through an invidious policy called ‘Small Sites’, and even setting targets for local authorities to approve such schemes.

But the real kick in the teeth is an obscure document called the Strategic Housing Market Assessment, which states that 55% of all new homes in London should have just one bedroom, and for social housing this goes up to 69%.

Prior to Sadiq Khan’s election in 2016, the number of family homes built in London had been steadily increasing, reaching 25% of all new homes. Now, this trend is going into reverse as a result of the Mayor’s policies. Last year the number of affordable homes of three bedrooms or more, funded by the Mayor, dropped by 30%.

All this flies in the face of the significant housing challenges facing London, particularly overcrowding. The latest figures show that 360,000 children in London live in overcrowded homes. This is simply a scandal for any major city. Overcrowding can have a serious impact on health and wellbeing, especially for children. It can spread diseases more quickly, lead to sleep disturbance and cause additional stress and strain. Hence, family housing should not just be seen as a luxury but as an urgent priority.

Back in 2011, I led a major review for the London Assembly called ‘Crowded Houses.’ Through this review we found that building a single family home could solve the problems of several households at the same time, due to the ‘churn’ effect of freeing up other homes further down the line. Not only would this approach help to tackle the scourge of overcrowding, it would have a transformative effect on the whole housing market, spreading home ownership more widely and across all generations. It means more homes available for younger first-time buyers, those with growing families, and older people who are perhaps looking to downsize.

Family houses also have the advantage of being more popular with local communities, and are therefore likely to have an easier and quicker path through the planning system, compared to blocks of smaller flats.

So how can we get more family homes built? To start with, housing policies need to be less about bean counting and more about common sense. If a development has a higher level of family-sized homes, even if it means fewer homes overall, that should be seen as a positive outcome rather than a negative one.

Where public funds are used for affordable housing, funding needs to be specifically targeted towards an appropriate number of family-sized homes. More can also be done to encourage downsizing through dedicated housing schemes, freeing up family homes that have become underused.

And policymakers should pro-actively identify land that would be suitable for family homes, backed up by supportive planning policies. They could also make land available to families to self-build their own homes, cutting costs and getting homes built more quickly in the process.

If we truly want to be on the side of aspiration, prosperity and home ownership, and solve our biggest housing challenges in the process, a good place to start is through family-friendly homes.

Andrew Boff AM is the Deputy Chair of the Housing Committee in the Greater London Assembly. This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine On the home front. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

Conservatives have always understood that for families to thrive, secure foundations are essential. A sense of belonging, investment in your own community, a stable place to raise children – these are the foundations for families and for society. Only safe homes can build safe communities. A safe home is a fundamental human need.

Most people aspire to own their home. Yet home ownership is falling. And for those who cannot buy, there is simply no stable option at all.

In the three and a half decades after the Second World War, Governments led by figures including Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan played a vital role in delivering four million social homes, at an average rate of more than 126,000 per year. It was in this period that we last reached the level of home building that the current Government is committed to – only when social homes have been delivered in significant numbers has the current Government’s target of 300,000 ever been reached.

Yet, over the past 40 years, social housing, and its value to society, has fallen out of our national conversation. As a result of this, last year fewer than 6,500 new social homes were delivered, while 1.1 million households face the uncertainty and hopelessness of council waiting lists.

This failure has come at a terrible time for our nation’s housing situation. Homeownership is in decline, there are 124,000 homeless children in England, and millions of families are trapped in unstable and expensive private renting.

Today, 800,000 people renting privately can’t even afford to save £10 per month. For many, saving for a deposit on a home of your own will forever remain out of reach, whatever interventions government might make to incentivise homeownership.

The sheer scale of the challenge we now face means no political party is able to ignore the need to take action. And a strong answer to the housing crisis will be required by voters of all parties at any general election.

Behind these statistics is also a human face of the housing emergency, the destructive despair, confusion and, frankly, destitution that Shelter’s support services are all too familiar with.

The only way we can help those at the sharp end of the national emergency our housing crisis has become, the only way to rediscover the sense of opportunity and stability that has been core to our nation’s concept of home, is to build high quality, affordable, social housing. I challenge the belief that building social housing is not the natural instinct of the Conservatives. Uncertain housing prevents too many people from developing their skills, exploring new ideas, reaching their potential. Poor housing forces a reliance on just about managing that restricts the dreams and aspirations of our society and limits the future of our children and young people.

As Lord O’Neill, one of the members of Shelter’s social housing commission, said: “There needs to be a profound shift to see social housing as a national asset like any other infrastructure. A home is the foundation of individual success in life, and public housebuilding can be the foundation of national success. It is the only hope the Government has of hitting its 300,000 homes a year target.”

The economic case is watertight. In fact, building more social housing offers an economic boon that should please the Chancellor.

Work by Capital Economics for Shelter’s social housing commission showed that investment in housing delivers hugely positive impact for the economy when compared with other industries – with every pound spent resulting in an additional £1.84 of sector activity.

Currently, we spend more than £21 billion per year on Housing Benefit. An eyewatering sum that is only necessary because of our long-term failure to provide social housing. And a large part of this money goes straight into the pockets of private landlords – an issue that Churchill himself roared against when he was President of the Board of Trade.

Right now, we need to spend on both Housing Benefit and housebuilding. That’s the price we are paying for decades of neglect of social housing. But over the long term, an investment in our social housing stock will reduce our reliance on the private rented sector and reduce our need to subsidise private rents with Housing Benefit.

By its nature, social housebuilding sits outside of the booms and busts of the private housebuilding market, and because of this it offers a level of stability and long-term security that private housebuilding never can. For example, the stable order book offered by a social housebuilding programme could give long-term certainty to small or medium-sized enterprises or to those looking to invest in the factories associated with new and exciting modern methods of construction.

I firmly believe that Conservatives are natural allies in Shelter’s call for three million more social homes to be delivered over the next 20 years. This is the level of ambition that our commission on social housing identified as necessary to solve our national housing emergency. Whatever happens in Europe, the housing emergency is a fault line in the foundations of British society, a division that will not heal without significant change. The boldness to make that change will be rewarded with vast economic and moral benefits for the nation.

Polly Neate is the Chief Executive of Shelter. This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine On the home front. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.

A rare consensus in British politics today is that the UK is facing a housing crisis. The precise causes of this crisis are more controversial. One argument frequently – and increasingly volubly – made is that it is actually a social housing crisis. Some argue the fall in housebuilding since its post-war peak is directly down to a collapse in public-sector housebuilding.

In this analysis, the introduction of the Right to Buy in the 1980s is often identified as something approaching a moment of original sin. By selling off our social housing stock, and failing to build replacements, Margaret Thatcher not only engaged in a bargain-basement transfer of the state’s assets to private individuals, but laid the seeds of the current disaster.

The prescription, accordingly, is simple: for the state to get back into the housebuilding business at a large scale.

But this argument is flawed on its own terms.

The UK has an unusually high rate of social housing provision compared to other countries, and a very low rate of home ownership. Far from being a nation of homeowners, we come a feeble fifth from the bottom in a ranking of 34 developed countries by home ownership rate, while we have the second highest proportion of housing which is let at subsidised or ‘social’ rents after only Slovenia.

These figures show that the UK’s housing crisis cannot, by its very nature, be a crisis of social housing. It is home ownership and private housing that is missing, not social housing.

We can also observe this from the impact Right to Buy did (or did not) have on social housing waiting lists. Contrary to the popular story you will hear from John McDonnell and the political Left, Right to Buy did not increase waiting lists. Waiting list numbers actually declined in the Right to Buy heyday of 1981-1997, by around 200,000, despite 100,000 social homes being sold off each year on average and only 36,000 being built. This was because private housing was more affordable, with house prices rising by only 8% in real terms. People want to be homeowners, and increasingly, even those on low and average incomes were moving into ownership.

The rate of decline in the social housing stock slowed substantially from 1997 to 2009, so the supply of social homes reduced much less, but social housing lists soared by 770,000. Why? Because real house prices rose by 108%. Waiting lists are primarily a function of private housing failure, which inflates the demand for social homes. Waiting lists track house prices, not stock levels. After all, selling a council house to the tenant means one less council house, but it also means one less household in need of social housing.

The problem with the UK is that the supply of housing has been inadequate, migration policy has added demand pressures, and on top of this, low interest rates combined with well-meaning but confused regulation has both increased prices and locked out people who do not have a large deposit. Nothing to do with Right to Buy.

Right to Buy was a positive because it increased the number of home owners in this country. Home ownership matters. People of all age groups and all tenures say it is by far their preferred tenure type. Polling shows people perceive benefits such as a greater sense of freedom and control over their own life, as well as feeling more settled – and that non-financial elements are actually more important than financial benefits. Owning is linked to greater wellbeing and life satisfaction, and academic research has consistently pointed to a positive link between home ownership and participation in community organisations, political engagement, and social capital in general.

The people who want and need social housing would rather be owners. If you help them to own, and do so just by moving properties and tenants out of the rented sector, this is a positive. In addition, if you move social housing properties into ownership, but this allows you to build more social homes to replace them, this is also a positive.

The introduction of the Right to Buy in the 1980s widened the circle of home ownership by offering council tenants the chance to own their own home – an offer that millions took up. However, in recent decades the take-up of Right to Buy has slowed to a crawl. The Conservatives’ promise in their 2015 manifesto to extend the Right to Buy to housing associations – which now own the majority of Britain’s social housing stock – has been kicked into the longest of Whitehall grass.

The public, of whatever age and background, still see owning a home as an essential part of living the good life. But increasingly, that ambition is being thwarted. The real crisis we face in our housing sector is a crisis of home ownership. At the Centre for Policy Studies, we set out ways in which the government should look to help private renters onto the housing ladder in a paper last year, ‘From Rent to Own’. But the Government also needs to not renege on the Conservative 2015 pledge to expand Right to Buy to housing association tenants.

If not for policy reasons, then the Government should reflect that at a time when trust and respect for politicians is at an all time low, betraying the clear pledge to between 1.3 and 1.8 million households – that the Right to Buy would be extended to them might be a bad idea. If the West Midlands pilot is broadly accurate, and had been rolled out nationally, 180,000 would be engaged in the process of buying their home.

We have allowed a narrative to develop around Right to Buy which views it as part of the problem, not the solution. The Conservative Party should be proud of the Right to Buy revolution and the rising home ownership which was delivered in the 1980s and 1990s. We need much more than Right to Buy – but it should remain part of the policy future in this country.

Alex Morton is the Head of Policy at the Centre for Policy Studies. This article first appeared in our Centre Write magazine On the home front. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue.