28 NEWS FEATURE
FOUR WAYS TO HELP SOLVE THE HOUSING CRISIS
Cleveland Containers assesses the scale of the UK’s housing crisis, and discusses a few ways that it could be solved.
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84,000 homes were built in England in 2017 – the highest amount since 2008 – and the then PM Theresa May
announced she was committed to making “the British dream a reality by reigniting home ownership in Britain once again”. Yet, with house prices rising by 3.2 per
cent YoY, and the latest news revealing that a third of millennials will never be homeowners, it’s clear there is still a crisis in this country. However, are we making a bigger deal out of this than we need?
BUILD AFFORDABLE HOMES
Sure, new housing estates are being built across the UK, but drive past them and you’ll often find rows of mock-Georgian style houses, or four-bedroom townhouses that are totally out of reach for the first- time buyer.
While new houses are being built, if they’re too expensive, then they won’t help to solve the current housing crisis. Instead, the Government should focus on building more affordable, modest homes that the first-time buyer can realis- tically save a deposit for: think two or three-bedroom terrace houses, or
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semi-detached homes.
By building affordable houses, millennials are provided with a glimmer of hope that getting a foot on the property ladder is on the horizon, making it a step in the right direction to solving the housing crisis.
REDUCE INVESTOR POWER One city where the housing crisis is becoming increasingly apparent is Manchester. Hailed by Deloitte as one of the fastest growing cities in Europe, of the 61 residential developments (consisting of 14,667 flats and houses) the council granted permission to in 2016-2017, not a single one of them were deemed to be “affordable”. In 2016, 50,000 people lived in
Manchester city centre, and it’s expected to reach 80,000 by 2024. When you see the skyline constantly changing with an increase in high-rise flats, you’d assume that the city is catering to the demand. Yet, if you look closer, you’ll soon realise that for the first-time buyer, these flats are out of reach.
Much of the accommodation in Manchester city centre bars first-time
buyers, clearly stating “investors only.” When you consider the fact that the average rent of a two-bed city centre flat is £1,100 a month (before bills), for many millennials it would make sense to house share or live with their parents to save a deposit…except even when they have the money, it’s deemed “not good enough”.
One way to help solve the housing crisis in major UK cities, is to stop many new developments from being bought for investment only. Instead, a mix of buy- to-let and first-time buyers makes much more sense, in order to cope with demand.
ALTERNATIVE HOUSING OPTIONS Some who can’t afford to get their foot on the traditional property ladder due to the housing crisis are looking at alternative means. Boats, shipping containers and sheds are just a few of the options for affordable accommodation. However, for this to be viable in the
future, we need to get rid of the stigma attached – especially when it comes to containers and sheds, as 70 per cent of people identify them as modular homes,
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