Like many homeless, John is ex-forces. He experiences PTSD, which has led him to make a few bad life choices. And yet I find him easy to live with. He is courteous and considerate. He helps around the garden and house, and looks after my dog when I’m out, so I benefit too.
The worst part of homelessness is the loss of dignity and self-respect, and the stigma that comes with it. John makes the point that he isn’t a junkie or an alcoholic, just a regular guy. It is true that 80% rough sleepers have problems with at least one of mental health, drugs and alcohol. Unfortunately, rough sleeping is a vicious cycle, either creating or amplifying these problems.
And yet John is someone many of us might admire. He’s hard working, multi-skilled and, of course, he’s served his country. But his path back to working and living in his own home again is very unclear. He has never owned a property, as he has always been on the move and never been able to build up savings. It doesn’t seem fair for him to be in this situation.
I find homelessness difficult to comprehend. Surely, in a civilized society, there is no excuse for it? Despite living in the world’s sixth biggest economy, ever more of us are living without anywhere to call home; sleeping rough, sofa surfing, in temporary accommodation or whatever. Right now, there are around 300,000 people in the UK who are homeless, more than 120,000 of them are children.
Across the country, there is a chronic shortage of social housing. For decades, successive governments have failed to build enough. This has left millions of people and countless communities without access to secure, long-term and affordable homes. In stark contrast to the pre-Right to Buy era, the vast majority of houses built since 1980 in the UK have been by private enterprise. In the UK, a much larger share of the population is renting instead of owning their homes, compared to other European countries. Out of approximately 23.5 million households, more than one in three are private or social renters.
The housing market in the last 20 years in particular has seen house values skyrocket. Throughout much of the late 20th century, most people could reasonably afford to buy a house, with the average house price amounting to four times the average salary. It has now shifted to almost 10 times more. In a just society, houses should first and foremost be homes, not financial assets.
There are so many injustices in the UK housing market, including huge generational gaps. The over 50s, accounting for less than half the adult population, now hold 78 % of all the UK’s privately held housing wealth and ‘Baby Boomers’ (or those over 65) own a staggering £2.5 trillion (2,500 billion!) in unearned property equity. For many, including most young people, getting hold of the bottom rung of the housing ladder is simply out of reach.
There are more than 100,000 houses belonging to foreign shell companies where for the most part, the owners cannot even be identified. Increasingly more houses are snapped up as second homes or holiday lets, amplifying the housing shortage for everyone else.
The country is heading towards a catastrophic situation, where hundreds of thousands of families and individuals in financial distress are facing being forced from their homes and into a system already strained to breaking point.
The delivery of genuinely affordable homes to combat the woeful shortage should be a Government priority. There is currently an overreliance on unsuitable temporary accommodation, often in private ownership, which is putting a huge strain on local authorities. Hastings Borough Council is close to bankruptcy as a result of needing to find temporary accommodation. Last year, Councils in England had to spend a record £2.4bn tackling homelessness, with £1.7bn of that spent on temporary accommodation – up more than 10% since last year. It doesn’t even fix the problem, it just kicks it down the road. The number of households in temporary accommodation will almost double in England over the next 20 years if there is no change to current policy.
Interestingly, just 5% of adults in the UK are landlords. Amongst Conservative MPs, that jumps to 20% and property developers are prominent amongst major donors to the party. Little wonder there is currently a lack of appetite to change policy in favour of a fairer system.
I was delighted to see Rother DC planning committee, which includes Green Party Councillor Polly Gray, support a tenure mix to deliver a 100% affordable housing scheme consisting of 39 dwellings at Westfield Down recently. Likewise, the creation of Rother DC Housing Company, which is now developing the Blackfriars site in Battle, which features 200 homes to include affordable homes, is a welcome development in Rother. Since 2011, Rother has only managed to deliver 516 affordable homes in total, when the annual target is 295.
There is no doubt that the issue of housing and homelessness is complex. The Green Party’s position on housing is that affordable, secure and comfortable accommodation is a basic human right, even for John. It can be achieved if the political will is there.
For more information, see: https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/our-policies/long-term-goals/housing/ .
