Housing Strategy

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Stroud (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I add my welcome to the Coming Home report and offer my congratulations to the most reverend Primates the Archbishops of Canterbury and York on their obvious and real commitment to this issue.

Before getting into the debate about housing per se, I will highlight the three aspects of the report that I want most to commend. First, the report is written in the most practical way that will ensure that much-needed housing is actually built. The report highlights the needs of 8 million people that are currently going unmet, so the issue of housing supply and quality is real and tangible. Secondly, the report is written in a way that understands the longing of the human heart for home and homes that are sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying. This understanding that a home is more than just bricks and mortar is crucial to the Britain we want to build and to building back better. Thirdly, it is a written in a way that takes responsibility and leaves us all asking ourselves: what can I do?

The Church of England is saying quite clearly that it wants to bring its land and lay it at the disposal of those in need, to find a way through on the issue of affordable housing. In the report it commits to using its land assets to promote more truly affordable homes. The response of every government department, business and owner of land needs to be: “What can we do?” I say to any Church Commissioners who are listening: I am aware that you hold the power to make this happen. I urge you to think about unlocking the potential of this recommendation as the Church seeks to lead the way.

The report finds that around 8 million people in England live in unaffordable, overcrowded or unsuitable homes. Whole sections of our society, including people of all ages, are affected by the UK’s housing challenge and history but those in poverty and who are vulnerable bear the brunt. The housing crisis has been driven by a number of factors and, as the report says, it has been a developing issue through the tenure of successive Governments but I am going to pick up on just three of the themes in the report and one of the recommendations. I am going to look at affordability, overcrowding and the stability of our homes, and then the call for a long-term housing strategy.

Turning to affordability, the report rightly identifies unaffordability and lack of supply as major issues. Any noble Lord with children in their 20s would be inclined to agree. The Government made strong commitments in their manifesto saying

“we will continue our progress towards our target of 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s. This will see us build at least a million more homes, of all tenures, over the next Parliament–in the areas that really need them.”

The report says,

“good housing policy creates stable communities, where, if they wish”

to stay, people are can buy or rent at truly affordable prices,

“put down roots and build lives, families”

and communities, but even most small homes are too expensive for most buyers in the UK. The average house sells for eight times the average annual income, and small overpriced homes are the result of a system that is simply not creating enough homes to meet demand.

Whether homes are owned or rented, we need an honest assessment of what “affordable” means. A 2018 CSJ report found that hospitality staff, hairdressers and supermarket employees on average salaries for their respective sectors would need to put away 10% of their wages for more than 100 years to afford a deposit on the average UK home and that most starter homes and shared ownership products are affordable to no more than 3% of new social tenants. This is unsustainable and has knock-on impacts.

As the gap between average incomes and house prices has widened, the proportion of all households renting privately has doubled since 2001. The sector now houses some 4.7 million households and around 12.9 million people. This, in turn, has put enormous strain on those in need of social housing, and there are some 1.2 million families on social housing waiting lists across the country. This, in turn, puts pressure on those in temporary housing, many staying in such homes for far beyond the legal guidelines—for months, if not years.

We are a nation that rightly values home, being able to put down roots and staying close to our family networks. We like our families. People’s impulse to home ownership is right and natural. People who own homes have a stake in their community; they feel secure and able to invest emotionally and financially in the place where they live. This is something that we want to encourage, and asset ownership of any kind makes people responsible and orientated to the long term.

The Coming Home report importantly recommends that

“The Government’s long-term housing strategy should include a specific goal to reduce the number of households living in temporary housing, which is by definition unstable.”


Furthermore, it recommends that there should be

“a new quality standard for temporary accommodation, and an effective”

and transparent

“resolution process when this standard is not being met.”

We all know that the principal cost of a house is the land that it sits on. I have previously written and spoken about the need to develop new models of land ownership, including via community land trusts, which acquire land on behalf of local people and sell only the bricks and mortar, at a greatly reduced cost compared to the price of the house plus land. We must also be wary that, as we grow the supply of homes required to reduce demand, the additional capacity is not consumed just by high-end buyers and investors, without benefit for the majority of people.

The second issue is overcrowding. This crisis, although referred to as a housing crisis, should not be underestimated for what it really is: a home crisis. As the Coming Home report eloquently puts it,

“good houses are places we delight to come home to, that give pleasure and satisfaction, both to live in and to look at.”

The average new home in Britain occupies a tiny 76 square metres, 40% less than the average new home in Germany and 30% less than in France. We should not seek to solve the housing crisis by creating more and more tiny flats that cement the fragmentation and atomisation of society. Instead, as we support our families with increasing relationship stability, we need to build homes that support community.

Thirdly, on the stability of housing, with unaffordability as a key challenge, many have resorted to the private rented sector, but here they have found that life can be precarious and certainly not stable. Landlords have a particular duty of care to their tenants but, with the threat of a no-fault eviction, vulnerable people are often hesitant to approach landlords when safety issues arise with their property, especially when children are involved. There are often no consequences for landlords who would rather evict their tenants for being difficult than address their concerns. For many across the UK the availability of homes is not the issue but the stability of tenancy. A stable home provides a period of predictability and security so that households have a reliable base around which to organise working and family life. One study found that, controlling for other factors, two or more moves in the first year of life could be linked definitively with behavioural problems at the age of nine, and for older children, home moves can mean school moves. Only 27% of pupils who move schools three times or more during their secondary school career achieve five A to C grades, compared to the national average of 60%.

However, of the many recommendations of the Coming Home report, the first—the recognition of the need for a long-term housing strategy—is perhaps of greatest importance. We have set a long-term vision for pensions, as well as for defence, development and foreign policy. It is time for a long-term strategy to be developed to address the issue of housing in the UK. It is interesting how across the social policy space, more and more of our challenges need a long-term approach. I have frequently highlighted the need for a poverty strategy, and those involved in social care are calling for a long-term social care strategy. There are serious reasons behind this.

First, we want to ensure that we are tackling the root causes of the problem and not just the symptoms and that our actions do not have unintended consequences. Here it is important that our actions do not, for example, lead to an artificially inflated housing market—it would be so easy to do so. Secondly, it is those who are most vulnerable who often interact with government policy at a greater number of points in their lives, so it is the most vulnerable who deal with government more than anyone else. What many of these people cannot take or cope with is swings in government policy—they are deeply destabilising. They also need to be able to rely on a strong social contract. For this reason, I echo the Archbishops’ call for a long-term strategy. However, this is also important from a planning perspective too. We are a nation starting out on a new journey. How great it would be if future generations were able to look back and say that we were characterised by such ambition that served them well and that we made the right calls to build this nation well at a moment of transition, that our legacy was one where homes became affordable, peaceful and stable.