Home ownership in England will slump to just 63.8% over the next decade says a report by the Housing Federation.
Federation chief executive David Orr points to a predicted drop in home ownership, increasing rents in the private sector and social housing waiting lists as reasons for the crisis.
He suggests building more homes.
However unless they are built as genuinely affordable homes then there is no point.
If they are not affordable (and I mean really affordable by people on even low wages) then you will just be providing more buy to let properties for landlords to buy and the rents issue won’t be solved.
My thoughts:
Rents should in theory be coming down with the reduction in LHA planned. This needs to happen more effectively to allow people to afford to pay their own rents when they work. Having to subsidise rents of those who work just shows how broken the system is and a huge percentage of people on LHA are actually working.
More really affordable housing will mean builders making virtually no profits. A house can cost about 40k to build tops so build in bulk and build big. If the original money wasted on Quantitative easing had been put into building social housing then the country would be in recovery mode by now.
Falling homw ownership by owner occupiers indicates someone else is buying the properties (Else they would just be empty surely) so this needs addressing too. Some areas have strict registration of landlords to improve areas but we need to be firmer on landlords who have poorly maintained propertys.