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Time to end the winners vs losers story in housing
Our new report reveals the devastating impact that the predominantly market-based approach to housing development has had on Manchester, writes Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester and chair of the Manchester Social Housing Commission
Dr David Walker is Bishop of Manchester
Our new report reveals the devastating impact that the predominantly market-based approach to housing development has had on Manchester, writes Right Reverend Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester and chair of the Manchester Social Housing Commission #UKhousingThirty-five years ago, I wrote to my then-bishop, expressing my increasing concerns that the 1990s would usher in a housing crisis at least as significant as the crisis in employment had been for the previous two decades. His response was to set up a commission and appoint me as its secretary.
We entitled our report Housing: Winners and Losers. Today, I find myself once again at the heart of another housing commission in my own Diocese of Manchester, this time as its chair, but the issue as to who loses and who wins in the struggle for decent housing is as stark today as it was three-and-a-half decades ago.
Looking across the booming skyline of Manchester’s urban regeneration success story, you could be tempted to ask “crisis, what crisis?”. Some 25,000 homes have been added to the city’s housing stock over the past decade, and yet beneath the gleaming new residential towers lies one of the country’s highest rates of homelessness, with more children pro rata living in temporary accommodation than most London boroughs.
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While Manchester’s housing crisis is rooted in several interconnecting factors that are mirrored around the country, the most obvious and keenly felt is the acute shortage of genuine social rented housing in the city. Back in the early 1980s, Manchester had more than 83,000 social homes, one for every two households in the city; today, that stock has fallen to 67,000, one social home for every five households.
Some 19,157 households are on the local housing waiting list, an astonishing 69% increase over the past decade, many with little hope of ever reaching the top.
These households must somehow make ends meet in the private rental sector (PRS), where the average monthly rent is around £1,200, and just 3% of new tenancies are affordable to tenants eligible for housing benefit in Manchester.
It was against this background that we launched the Manchester Social Housing Commission last July. It was set up by a coalition of voluntary and community sector organisations who’d had enough of shouting from the rooftops and not getting heard. Each month, tenants, community groups, political leaders and officers at Manchester City Council, senior public and voluntary sector housing and planning professionals, and academics get round the table with a shared purpose: to come up with concrete and practical solutions to accelerate the delivery of housing for social rent in Manchester that is also ecologically sustainable.
Social rented housing plays a unique role in the housing system as the most affordable, secure and decent tenure, delivered to directly meet social need. Social housing rents are linked to local incomes, making them far more affordable and rent increases more predictable than in the PRS. The lack of social rental housing – combined with high rents, inadequate welfare support and low wages – fuels poverty, compounds health inequalities, and drives up costs in the health and social care sector.
Manchester’s challenges are not unique, but by taking a deep and close look at the place of social housing and the interlocking crises in this one city, we can shed light on the problems experienced in, and possible solutions for, many other urban areas of the country.
Today we unveil our first report – Manchester’s Housing Crisis in Context: Why We need Sustainable Homes for Social Rent. The report lays bare the stark failures of a predominantly market-based approach to housing development that has turned housing from a public good into a financial asset. Between 2012 and 2022, just 2% of all new housing built in Manchester was for social rent.
“The lack of social rental housing – combined with high rents, inadequate welfare support and low wages – fuels poverty, compounds health inequalities, and drives up costs in the health and social care sector”
Our report offers five urgent recommendations to central government to help fix this mess. Foremost is the need to reinvest in social rent with generous long-term funding, borrowing and a rent settlement for social housing providers tied to zero-carbon standards so they can build the homes we need.
Second, we need tougher planning targets and minimum requirements for social rent in all housing developments, based on local housing needs assessments that factor in homelessness and housing need. Third, it’s time to end the Right to Buy, the largest contributor to the loss of social housing. Fourth, we urge the government to abolish VAT on green refurbishment and empower local authorities to retrofit empty homes for sustainable social rent.
Finally, and of utmost importance to our tenant commissioners, communities and their locally elected representatives need stronger statutory powers within the planning system to properly shape the investment decisions that are made about where they live to ensure local development is more equitable and democratic, and reflects the needs of present and future generations.
We offer this contribution at a critical moment in the UK political scene. A still relatively new government, with a substantial parliamentary majority, is better placed than at most points in the political cycle to think beyond the short term, to ensure a future that doesn’t continue to divide us into those “winners and losers” that the first commission I served on identified half a lifetime ago.
Dr David Walker, Bishop of Manchester; and chair, Manchester Social Housing Commission
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