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Housing benefit bill ‘to hit £71bn by 2050’
The housing benefit bill will rise to £71bn a year by 2050 unless levels of social housebuilding increase, an influential thinktank has warned.
Analysis by the Centre for Social Justice’s (CSJ) housing commission predicts that half of that money will go to private landlords.
People receiving housing benefit while living in the private rented sector cost the taxpayer 25% more on average than those living in social housing, researchers said.
And they warned that affordable housing products – such as affordable rent, which can be up to 80% of market rates, or shared ownership – “will do nothing to reduce the burgeoning housing benefit bill”.
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Ahead of today’s Autumn Budget, the CSJ called on the government to demand explicitly that developers provide social housing in schemes as a replacement to the requirement for affordable housing.
It also urged ministers to allow councils to keep 100% of Right to Buy receipts in order to fund new housing.
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“The drastic reduction in the supply of new council homes over the decades has had devastating consequences for both the taxpayer and the lowest earners to struggle to meet the cost of rent,” said Andy Cook, chief executive of the CSJ.
“Housing has become one of the most urgent political issues of our time, but often the difficulty for the middle classes to get on the property ladder deflects focus from those for who struggle to meet the growing cost of rent.”
The CSJ’s housing commission, established in March 2018 “to address the provision and quality of social housing in England”, will issue a final report in spring 2019.
Today’s report is attached to this article.
