BY THE end of the UK’s next Parliament, no household on a mean income or below needs to be obliged to pay greater than 35 per cent of their disposable income on direct housing costs, a latest vision for housing, endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, suggests.
Homes for all: A vision for England’s housing system, launched within the House of Lords last week, argues that tackling the country’s housing crisis necessitates proposals that “move beyond incremental change. They must add as much as nothing lower than system transformation.”
Housing needs to be elevated above party politics, it argues, through a cross-party commitment to an extended strategy (it estimates 30 years) and the establishment, in law, of a latest Housing Strategy Committee to carry future governments to account. Among the 25 “key outcomes” set out within the vision is that homelessness needs to be “all but eradicated”.
The vision is a partnership between the Church of England — represented by the Bishop of Chelmsford and lead bishop for housing, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, leading a cross-party steering group within the House of Lords — and the Nationwide Foundation, established as a charitable foundation by the Nationwide constructing society (News, 22 September 2023). It is supported by organisations comparable to the National Housing Federation, Crisis, Housing Justice, and the Centre for Policy Studies.
The report offers a critical diagnosis of political responses to this point, arguing that “just about all the measures that successive governments have tried have been short-term initiatives, lots of which have made things worse, not higher.” It identifies “a scarcity of policy stability, ambition and urgency across successive governments, and a failure to attach the problems through a systemic and coordinated approach”.
While “quite a few thoughtful, coherent reports” have explored the explanations for, and solutions to, the housing crisis, “there isn’t a collective national vision of what the aim of housing policy is or what it’s designed to attain, and subsequently politicians and the general public don’t have any shared understanding of what beauty like.”
The suggested vision is encapsulated as “An end to the stress and worry of being locked out of home ownership. Everyone having a secure, warm home that supports their health. Homes for all that release the constraints of poverty. All of us going into our later years with the sense of comfort and dignity that comes from a secure place to live. Every child having the stable foundation they should thrive.”
Twenty-five “key outcomes” are set out, including: “People shouldn’t must spend greater than an agreed percentage of their income to secure housing that meets their needs and still have sufficient income after paying housing costs” (35 per cent is usually recommended as “illustrative” of the size of motion required by the top of the subsequent Parliament). Another is that “house prices and rents rise on average only according to inflation over time.”
With cross-party support, the subsequent Parliament should, it suggests, enshrine in law each the vision and the creation of a Housing Strategy Committee to supply annual reports to Parliament on progress and to carry governments to account.
Having criticised “short-termism”, the report suggests that delivery of the vision would require “consistent implementation and investment for as much as 30 years”. But it also says that work should start immediately, and suggests that some targets might underpin the primary five years of a 30-year strategy.
Among these targets is the setting of a housing-supply goal. At least 120,000 of the 300,000 additional homes a yr (a government commitment) needs to be “social and reasonably priced homes”, it says. “Social rented homes are the one kind of housing genuinely reasonably priced to those on the bottom incomes; increasing their number needs to be a priority.” While its proposals aren’t costed, it warns that “We is not going to deliver the extent of latest housing we now require without substantially greater government involvement and investment.”
Meeting the goal would require “considerable institutional change”, including “greater use of public-interest-led collaboration in land purchase, assembly and release, taking full account of social value”, and “a sustained shift to reasonably priced and social housing supply”. Such changes would “change the dynamics of development with the aim that more homes shall be built at lower rates of return, thereby delivering greater affordability”.
Addressing the housing crisis successfully would “carry consequences for everybody, and a few people might initially perceive those consequences as negative”, it says. Some people might must “accumulate wealth more slowly or be willing to simply accept changes that, not less than initially, they aren’t captivated with — comparable to a latest residential development of their locality”.
It quotes an earlier report, Coming Home, published in 2021 by the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing (News 26 February 2021), which warned that “lasting change doesn’t come without sacrifice — the sacrifice of privilege, of power, and of potential profit.”
This report had more to say about where sacrifice is perhaps demanded in reforms to the system, and listed Government, landlords, landowners, and developers. It described how, when selecting when to develop land, the latter two could “sit tight and wait for a unique government to alter the principles again”; argued that developers should contribute more cost-effective housing (not “the least possible”); and set out possible ways to “reduce land prices and windfall gains to landowners”.
It was also critical of the definition of “reasonably priced” utilized in housing developments, arguing that “neither the 30 per cent volume policy, nor the 20 per cent price discount, are sufficient.”
Much of this earlier report explored how the Church, as a big landowner (of 200,000 acres), might contribute to tackling the housing crisis, “using its land assets to assist create truly reasonably priced housing, and never simply be driven towards land sales at the very best price”.
It asked whether the Church Commissioners could possibly be “sacrificial” of their development of land, “and accept, if vital, a lower cost for his or her land with a purpose to deliver more cost-effective housing”, as “a strong witness to the nation and world”. One option mentioned was legally changing the Commissioners’ remit to enable such a sacrifice.
Three years on, the Commissioners have made a commitment to constructing 30,000 latest homes on 60 sites in England, of which fewer than one third (9000 homes) are to be reasonably priced (News, 27 May 2022).
On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Commissioners said that they were bringing forward “substantial latest developments that help to handle housing need across England. We provide a combination of market and reasonably priced homes in accordance with local planning policy, meet identified social and environmental needs inside communities, and adopt the five Coming Home principles: Sustainable, Safe, Stable, Sociable, and Satisfying.
“Where possible, we do seek to go further, for instance the delivery of Rural Exceptions Sites where we will provide the next proportion of reasonably priced housing than local plans mandate.”
Among the statistics highlighted in Homes For All are 1.2 million households on local-authority social-housing waiting lists, and 14 per cent of homes failing to satisfy the Decent Homes Standard.
On Tuesday, Shelter drew attention to latest government statistics showing that a record 145,800 children were living in temporary accommodation: up 15 per cent on last yr. It is looking on all political parties to make a commitment to constructing 90,000 “genuinely reasonably priced social homes” a yr.
