This article by housing campaigner and guest columnist, Kwajo Tweneboa, discusses what political parties need to do to solve the housing crisis and is one of Kwajo’s shortlisted  pieces for the Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness.

I firmly believe the general election could be won or lost on housing policies.

Major political parties have one shot at getting it right – and right now the most acute crisis is in social housing and the rental sector. Yet between 2022-2023, 2,300 people died while on the council housing waiting list, waiting for a roof over their heads that they could call home.

Also, 139,000 kids are homeless in England, enough to fill London’s O2 Arena nearly seven times over. Yet, under the Right to Buy Scheme, more social homes are sold off than constructed, and that’s a trend we have seen in the UK for years. Any government or politician serious about reducing homelessness and tackling the housing crisis will understand we need a bottom-up approach to fixing the sector.

That starts with social housing, and suspending the Right to Buy scheme or, at the very least, drastically changing the policy to mean we are no longer selling off the little social housing stock we so desperately need. With no-fault evictions hitting an eight-year high, common sense would suggest many of those receiving notices will turn to local authorities for help, yet with no social housing availability they’ll have to join a queue of 1.4 million people ahead of them.

It is widely known within the social housing sector that councils and housing associations have tens of thousands of vacant properties sitting empty for a variety of reasons for months and, in some cases, years. During a social housing crisis, it should be required that all void and vacant properties be used to house people. Things don’t get any better in the private rental sector, with many worrying their rents will be increased or in fear of receiving a Section 21 no-fault eviction.

According to research by Which? about seven million UK households are struggling to keep up with rent or mortgage payments. Rents, especially in major cities, are incredibly unaffordable. In 1980, people in places like London, on average, spent 20-30% of their monthly income on private rents.

Now that figure has risen to 40-50% and in roughly one-third of cases, even more. The Government will have to look into regulating private rents to prevent exacerbating the housing crisis and levels of homelessness across the country. Private renting costs are at the centre of our housing crisis and voters will be looking to political parties at the general election to create the change so desperately needed.

‍This article was first published by the Mirror.

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