Search for solutions

Posted by: Jules Birch

15/06/2009

The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) conference opens in Harrogate today with the problems piling up and Britain’s housing system in crisis. Solutions are rather thinner on the ground.

An opinion poll commissioned by the CIH reveals that young people in particular have gone off homeownership. Only a third of 18-24 year olds think it is the right tenure for them. Hardly surprising when 28% of those with a mortgage in the 25 to 35 age group are in negative equity. 

The effects can be seen in a survey of CIH members. Some 80% say that demand for rented accommodation has gone up over the last 12 months and 84% reported increased demand for debt advice and counselling services.

How much worse might things have been had the government actually succeeded in creating a million extra homeowners by 2010? That was the target set in May 2005 by the then chancellor Gordon Brown. ‘We are determined to build on the one million more home owners since 1997 to reach two million by 2010,’ he said at the launch.

The target looked reckless at the time and was never achieved. By the end of last year the number of homeowners in England had fallen by 160,000 and the number of people buying with a mortgage by almost 500,000. Good news since, with house prices now back to 2005 levels, the number of people in negative equity could be double what it is now. 

But what about solutions? CIH chief executive Sarah Webb says: ‘We’ve driven too many people into unsustainable owner occupation and we need to make a far better job of putting renting and owning on a level playing field. A generation has grown up believing it has to own at any cost – in part because we haven’t provided them with decent information about the alternatives. We can’t repeat this mistake with future young people.’

With green shoots appearing in the housing market and an election a maximum of a year away, it’s probably too much to expect the politicians to come up with much that will alienate the 68% of the population who still own their homes. With public spending cuts in the offing it’s probably too much to expect much more in the way of social housing investment, whatever Gordon Brown might hint at. 

But there has probably never been a better time for the housing profession to reach out beyond the boundaries of social housing and try to influence where policy goes next.