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Action on the Affordable Housing Crisis

The housing crisis is about affordability

Key housing crisis facts

The relationship between housing supply and housing affordability is far from straight forward:

From 2013 to 2023, London’s population increased from 8.4 million to 8.9 million = growth of 6% – source GLA data store
This has been far outstripped by growth in the number of dwellings which increased from 3.41 to 3.79 million over the same period = growth of 11% – source office of national statistics
Yet the average house price went from £333,332 in January 2013 to £549,112 in Dec 2023 = growth of 65% – source land registry – UK house price index

This isn’t a housebuilding crisis. It’s an affordability emergency.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, even with major planning reforms: “More housebuilding will increase the housing stock by just 0.5% by 2029-2030 and only reduce the average house price by around 0.8-0.9%.” (See end note.) That’s the Government’s own forecast!

We need to be clear, building more homes, especially high-cost ones on Green Belt land, won’t solve this. That is not a housing strategy. It’s a set of policies which accommodate housebuilders’ lobbying requests.

Instead, targeted action is needed on making more affordable homes available.

CPRE London has joined with the Just Space Network to create the action plan below.

Action Plan for the Housing Crisis

To tackle the housing crisis, we need to:

Protect social housing by ending Right to Buy in England and buying back homes previously sold. Only a tiny proportion of homes sold in this way have ever been replaced. Right to Buy benefits individuals but at the huge cost of reducing the availability of affordable housing for those who need it most. It generates short-term income for councils but at the cost of future regular income.

nvest in a major new social housing building programme. Borrowing to invest in building social housing stock will pay off long term and be an income generator.

Establish a new National Empty Homes Programme as called for by Action on Empty Homes. There is need for incentives to rent out empty bedrooms or get whole empty homes back into use. Bringing empty homes back into use is both an essential response to the housing crisis and a crucial step to achieving net-zero by 2050.

Launch a new Housing Rights Bill to enable security of tenure, safe living conditions and well designed and carefully targeted rent control powers for regional and local authorities.

Fund independent legal support for renters to take their landlord to court if they are living in substandard conditions or their housing rights are threatened. Inadequate housing provision threatens people’s physical and mental health and can not be allowed to go unchallenged.

We are spending more today on subsidising insecure, unaffordable private rents than we have spent on building ‘affordable’ homes in 35 years.

Investing in the actions described above will be cost-effective and will directly impact access to affordable homes, reducing benefits and housing bills – ultimately improving economic, social and health outcomes.

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Wider issues that need to be considered by policy makers

Planning permission should be granted on a use it or loose it basis. More than 300,000 homes in London have planning permission but haven’t been built. That’s a 5 to 10 year supply of planning permissions and there are many more in the pipeline. Without doing a thing developers benefit from an increase in land value that comes with having planning permission. It is not in the interest of developers to build all these potential homes at once because this would bring down property prices which eats in to their profits. They can profit simply by holding on to land which has planning permission. Planning permission should be given on a ‘use it or loose it’ basis in order to help get these homes built!

Targets should be set for building social and truly affordable housing so that everyone has access to decent housing for their household size affordable on their income. This is basic need which needs addressing.

Maintaining and upgrading the existing affordable housing stock is key. A huge failure in ensuring a reliable supply of decent and affordable homes has been the lack of investment in ongoing maintenance. We need to invest in improving the quality of the existing stock of affordable homes, by for example by making shared green spaces more inviting, and simply through vital regular building maintenance.

We need to look at upcycling housing, and indeed other buildings, that have been allowed to become derelict, and come up with creative ideas for how these can be transformed and brought back into use. This is far more carbon efficient than building from scratch.

Speculation around the possibility of loosening of protection on Green Belt sites leads to increased ‘land-banking’. Developers already own a large amount of protected Green Belt land and are already profiting hugely imply from discussion around releasing land for development – without building a thing – as just this possibility has led to a spike in the value of these sites. It is vital that Green Belt is not made a grey area! Clarity about the purpose and value of Green Belt – including for containing carbon hungry, car-dependent urban sprawl, for local food growing, and for nature based climate action is key.