New Government urged to tackle housing crisis
Young Workers October 1 2015Generation Rent today calls on the new government to agree a strategy to jump-start the house building industry and create a fair deal for people renting, publishing a “Queen’s Speech on housing”, which is sponsored by the youth network of the CWU Trade Union.
The policy document says that the housing crisis cannot be fixed without proper leadership, effective regulation, a commitment to wean the country off rising house prices and investment in public housing. The demands include a position of Secretary of State for Housing, protections for tenants when their landlord wants to sell the property, and a system of rent control and tax on landlords which would raise money for a public house building programme.
The campaign’s proposals are published as a poll from Survation finds that 63% of private renters want to leave private renting in the next five years but only a third of those think it’s likely to happen. That means that out of the UK’s 4.75m private renter households, 1.95m find themselves stuck in an unsuitable tenure.
55% of private renters would like to buy a home in the next five years, which equates to 2.61m private renter households. That would involve more than half a million households becoming first time buyers every year – a level not seen since 2002.
Until houses become affordable enough to allow mass home ownership again, those stuck in inadequate private renting need a better deal. Generation Rent offers this in “A Queens Speech for Housing: What the new government can do to end Britain’s Housing Crisis”, published with sponsorship from CWU Youth.
Alex Hilton, Director of Generation Rent, said:
“This programme is what ending the housing crisis looks like. These are actions that can be taken immediately that will provide funds for public housing, protection for tenants, begin to wean the nation off its addiction to capital gain and support the leadership we need at national and local level to take on this challenge.
“To date we have seen no other plan to solve this crisis. There are plans to fiddle around the edges and even plans to make it worse, but none that provide a solution and do so with urgency.”
Ben Abrams, Chair of CWU Youth, said:
“When a person can’t find a place to live that has decent conditions, secure tenure, is sufficiently near work and is affordable, that’s a crisis. But it’s now a reality for millions of people. They can’t wait a generation for respite and we can’t tell our young people that we are writing off their welfare for the next 25 years so that property developers can enrich themselves.”
