14 THE SOCIAL NETWORK Patrick Mooney
BUILDING GENUINELY AFFORDABLE HOMES
Patrick Mooney, housing consultant and news editor of Housing, Management and Maintenance magazine discusses why levelling up requires more genuinely affordable homes, including homes for social rent.
here are approximately 24 million households in England, and a surpris- ingly high number of us are dissatisfied with our existing accommodation and are looking to move.
T
THE NUMBERS JOINING THE HOUSING WAITING LISTS ARE RISING SO FAST THAT THE STATE AND PRIVATE SECTORS ARE FAILING TO KEEP UP WITH DEMAND
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In fact some 1.151 million households are currently sitting on local authority waiting lists across the country, hoping to be rehoused into a property more suitable to their circumstances in the very near future. Limited incomes means they cannot buy a solution to their problem. The bad news for the vast majority of them is that they are likely to be waiting for a very long time before they get offered a chance to move, largely because of a national shortage of low-cost homes. So, they’d better be patient. The numbers joining the housing waiting lists are rising fast. In fact they’re rising so fast that the combined forces of the state and the private sector are spectacularly failing to keep up with demand. And, of
course, the Coronavirus pandemic has made matters worse.
One of the worst affected groups are those people waiting for what is glibly referred to as ‘affordable housing.’ Many of them will be waiting for over five years before receiving an offer, and the Local Government Association warned Ministers just before Christmas that they expect the number on council housing waiting lists to rise to 2.1 million households during 2022/23.
This is understood to be due to the impact of Covid-related support schemes winding down, rent arrears spiking, evictions returning to pre-pandemic levels and an increase in homelessness.
PROBLEMS WITH SUPPLY
Sadly the outlook does not look good, as the latest delivery figures show only one new social rent home was built for every 192
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