16 COMMENT ECONOMIC BENEFIT
Patrick Mooney, housing consultant and news editor of Housing, Management & Maintenance magazine says the social housing market is in the doldrums, after a Budget which missed the opportunity for wider economic stimulus.
Patrick Mooney T
he domestic housing market is a notoriously fi ckle beast and it relies heavily on stability in the political world,
the economy and fi nancial markets in order to thrive. evels of demand clearly affect prices, but they have much less of an effect on the supply side of housing than you might think. My opening paragraph is the end of my ll
ou eed to now about ousing tutorial, but needless to say it might explain why there is so much turmoil in the housing markets operating all over the country at the moment. Elections naturally create uncertainty and instability except in countries governed by a single party or a despotic leader and it is estimated that approximately half of the worlds population is entitled to vote in general elections taking place this year. ll of which means that our domestic housing market is being buffeted by events happening all across the globe, over which we have absolutely no control.
THE NUMBER OF SOCIAL HOMES BEING BUILT HAS BEEN ON A DOWNWARD TRAJECTORY FOR YEARS, BUT HAS NOW REACHED AN ABSOLUTE LOW POINT
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here are further complications in the provision of new social and affordable housing which is heavily reliant on a host of other factors, such as the level of need, the local planning framework and the availability and cost of land. ut above all else it depends on the amount of subsidy which social landlords can put in and how much fi nancial support they get from omes ngland andor a host local authority.
MISSED OPPORTUNITY
he budget in March provided the overnment with a golden opportunity to provide a lot of stimulus, investment and reassurance to domestic housing markets, but sadly it failed to do so. s a result, we are potentially facing a year when record low levels of new houses for sale and for rent are delivered. ut this is not a new problem. or decades, governments of all persuasions have failed to build enough social homes in particular and every year we lose more than we build through right-to-buy sales and demolitions. ast year alone, there was a net loss of nearly , social homes, while . million households are stuck on social housing waiting lists in ngland.
his matters hugely because the housing sector is already failing to meet the needs of those on lower than average incomes.
ocial rents are generally around cheaper than private rents and these homes are the only genuinely affordable housing by design, as rents should be tied to local incomes. n human terms we are seeing young children being raised in temporary housing to the detriment of their life chances and a growing number of councils facing bankruptcy and budget cuts running into billions of pounds. mong the recent fi gures released on homelessness by the epartment for evelling p, ousing and ommunities, are the following • he number of homeless households living in temporary accommodation hit a record high in ngland with , households in temporary accommodation which is up in a year
• ome , children are homeless and living in temporary accommodation with their families. This is another record high and it is up by , in a year
• hese fi gures include nearly , babies aged under one, nearly , infants aged between one and two and about , aged two to three, with over , children of primary school age in temporary accommodation, fractionally under of all state primary pupils across ngland
• n investigation into child deaths found that living in temporary accommodation was a factor in the unexpected deaths of children between pril and March , with of the deceased under 12 months of age.
o this rash of horrifi c statistics, we can add • he number of people sleeping rough in ngland has more than doubled since when the data started being collected rising by
• he latest count shows , people were recorded sleeping rough on a given night in , a increase in one year
• , households in ngland have been removed from their homes by court bailiffs as a result of ection since the overnment fi rst promised to scrap no-fault evictions in
• n the past year , households were kicked out of their homes by bailiffs, up by from , households in
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