Homelessness Rising And Villagers Priced Out In Rural England

The number of social homes being built in rural England has fallen by more than 80% in the last six years. Research has found just 1,309 social houses were built in rural areas in 2017-18, despite hundreds of thousands of people stuck on long waiting lists. Sky News and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) can reveal that social housing - previously known as council housing - has fallen by 83% between 2011-12 and 2018. Read more on the Sky News website.

https://news.sky.com/story/social-housing-falls-sharply-in-rural-england-as-villagers-priced-out-or-made-homeless-11819138

Teachers And Other Key Workers Priced Out Of York

Teachers, young families and key workers are being prevented from coming to work and live in York because senior councillors are “failing” to deliver affordable homes, according to the Labour group. A spokesman for the Labour group said just 130 affordable homes have been built each year in recent years, when the city needs 573 built every year. They added that the council agreed plans for a development company in December but no progress had been made since. Labour Cllr Michael Pavlovic called in the decision on the development company at a scrutiny committee meeting. Read more on the York Press website.

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/16589844.teachers-and-other-key-workers-priced-out-of-york-homes-claims/

Property Unaffordable For 100,000 Households A Year In England

Almost 100,000 households in England are being priced out of the property market each year because of a shortage of affordable homes to rent or buy, according to a report. Research by the estate agent Savills, shared with the Guardian, found the number of priced-out households had risen from its previous projection in 2015 of 70,000 a year. This was in part because of a change in how housing need is assessed, but also due to rising prices and stagnant wage growth. Read more on the Guardian website.

Homes 'Too Expensive' For Help To Buy Isa Scheme

Would-be-homeowners in large parts of England are being priced out of a government scheme to help first-time buyers, a BBC investigation has found. The Help to Buy Individual Savings Account (HTB Isa) was introduced last year to help people save for a home. In many areas, the average price of a starter home exceeds the maximum purchase cap of £250,000, or £450,000 in London. However, the bonus is only available if the purchase price does not exceed the cap. Housing charity Shelter said it only helped "the lucky few" and the government should focus on building more homes. Read more on the BBC website.

The Need For Stable Renting In England

Private renting used to be seen as a stopgap. It has struggled to shake its image as short-term housing for students and people still trying to get on the housing ladder. But the number of people privately renting has ballooned in recent years. In the last decade it's doubled in size, as more and more people have been priced out of home ownership or unable to get a social rented home. While short-term private lets may have been suitable in the past, this new generation of private renters want stable, long-term housing. Almost 9 in 10 renters say that being able to stay somewhere for the long-term is an important consideration when they are looking for a home. Despite this overwhelming demand for long-term housing, a stable home is something that the English private rented sector is least able to provide. Download Shelter’s briefing from their website.

Five Big Concerns About Pay To Stay

Parliament must look long and hard at the potential impacts of the Government’s proposed Pay to Stay policy, part of the Housing and Planning Bill. Shelter is not against the principle of some social housing tenants paying slightly higher rents, depending on their income and household need. But we are very concerned that doing it in this way risks taking a sledgehammer to a nut and finding there is little of the nut left at the end.  We have 5 big concerns about Pay to Stay:

1.  It will increase the housing benefit bill

2. It will weaken incentives to work

3. It will price out nurses, paramedics and teachers

4. It will create a costly, bureaucratic headache

5. ‘Higher income’ social tenants will be unable to afford to buy

For more details go to the Shelter blog.

Non-Starter Homes

The government’s flagship house building policy is 200,000 new “Starter Homes” by 2020. The policy was launched with a fanfare by the Prime Minister during the general election campaign with the words “a home of your own” emblazoned behind him: a sentiment that Shelter would certainly endorse. However, new analysis shows that these Starter Homes will be a non-starter for families on typical wages across most of the country. In fact, average earning families will be priced out of these new “affordable” homes in 58% of local authorities by 2020, while families earning the new National Living Wage will be priced out in 98% of the country. The government might be scratching its head at these results but even with a 20% discount on the price and an average deposit already saved up or gifted, typical families can’t afford these homes in most places. How can this be? It’s simply because house prices are now so wildly out of kilter with normal earnings. Read more on the Shelter blog.

Housing Crisis Creating 'Pensioner Pockets' Across Rural England

A dire lack of affordable homes in England’s rural areas is pricing out young people and families and could lead to countryside ‘pensioner pockets’. A new analysis of population trends reveals the number of pensioners is set to soar across England’s rural communities by 2021, as younger generations who aspire to ‘grow up and grow old’ in rural villages and towns can’t get a foot on the local property ladder. The National Housing Federation has released a list of the country’s top ‘pensioner pockets’ where more than 40%, or four in every 10 households, will be over 65 in just six years’ time, considerably higher than the predicated national average of 29%. Read more on the NHF website.

Survey Twists the Knife For Priced Out First-Time Buyers

As if to add insult to injury for those aspiring home buyers priced out of the dream, Santander has revealed that some people are happy to pay over the odds to secure a property in that just-right place.  The company rubs it in even more with its choice of term; claiming its research reveals Britain is increasingly becoming a “recreation nation”. These ‘premium’ home buyers are looking to cut their daily commute and boost their leisure time; nearby green spaces, ready access to sports facilities, bars and restaurants, all heavily influence their choice on where to buy and they’re prepared to pay extra to get the right location.  The features of property itself, by contrast, are becoming less important, claims the research, which surveyed over 2,000 UK adults. Read more on the Housing Excellence website.

Renting Your Way to Poverty: Welcome to the Future of Housing

The housing crisis is already out of control, and no one in politics wants to help.

George Osborne’s latest budget continued the trend of all his other budgets: introduce new measures that will further inflate house prices. This time it was "help to buy" ISA’s . Prices have risen because the government has been trying to get them to rise. At the end of 2014 Priced Out calculated that the Help to Buy programme had helped raise average prices by £46,000 in 18 months resulting in an additional 258,000 renters being priced-out of buying a home as compared to the 31,000 buyers helped by the scheme. Some 3.5 million people who would have normally been able to buy a home are now trapped in private renting. Read more on the Yahoo News website.

Public Support for Rent Controls, But No Political Will

Support for rent controls is gaining momentum in the UK as continuously climbing property prices are making housing unaffordable for middle class and young families. The majority of people want the government to impose legal limits on rents for privately rented housing. Nearly 59 % of people showed their support for rent controls in a survey conducted by Survation recently. Only 6.8% of respondents were opposed. The remaining 34% didn’t have an opinion on the issue. In London, the ratio of people in favour of legal rent controls was even higher. Nearly 64.5% of those polled said that they “somewhat” or “strongly” supported mandatory rent controls. Read more on the Global Property Guide website.

Local Authority's 'Benefit Tourism' Rule Discriminated Against Residents

A local authority acted illegally when it introduced strict residency criteria designed to prevent it becoming a magnet for "benefit tourists" priced out of high-cost areas of London and the south-east by welfare reforms, a judge has ruled. Sandwell council brought in a policy over a year ago which prevented people on low incomes claiming council tax support unless they had been resident continuously in the borough for two years prior to the claim. Rather than discouraging "incomers" from the south-east, however, the court heard that the policy seemed to mainly affect people who had been born in Sandwell and had strong family connections there, while also discriminating against local women affected by domestic violence. Thousands of Sandwell residents denied council tax support since April 2013 may now be eligible to claim their money back. Read oore on the Guardian website.