Housing Supply and Homelessness

Baroness Smith of Llanfaes Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Llanfaes (PC)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for bringing forward this important debate. My experiences, and those of people I know, of social housing, the private rental sector and the housing crisis in Wales drive my interest in this debate.

YouGov polling shows that young adults see housing as one of the most important issues facing the UK. This rings true, as housing is also a top concern raised by young people in schools and colleges time after time when I run sessions with them. They tell me that they fear they will never own their own home. Some also fear that they will not be able to move out of their family home due to soaring rents in the private rented sector. The situation for private renters is no cause for optimism either. According to the ONS, average rents in Wales rose by 8.5% in the past 12 months, and the median monthly rent in Wales for 2021-22 represented 23% of the median gross income of private renting households. However, for people on the lowest income, even the cheapest houses represented 31% of their income.

Most young people I know who have been able to move into rented accommodation cannot afford to save for a deposit to get on the housing ladder. The idea of owning a home is becoming increasingly unrealistic. According to analysis from the ONS, a full-time employee in Wales can expect to spend 6.1 times their earnings on purchasing a home in the local authority area in which they work. This is the reality of many young people across the UK, and it is not good enough.

I raised the issue in my maiden speech when I joined this House—that although housing is a devolved subject area, social security is not. The interplay of these two dimensions is of critical importance to the people of Wales. I share the view expressed earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, that solving the housing crisis has to be achieved through poverty prevention. I also echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, that “homelessness is about people” and that we must not let people down.

The most recent statistics show that more than 11,000 people in Wales are in temporary accommodation —poor-quality accommodation, as was noted earlier. More than 2,000 of them are aged under 16, and there are more than 139,000 people on social housing waiting lists.

Plaid Cymru campaigned to end the scandal of the housing revenue account subsidy scheme, which saw local authorities send council house tenant rental income to Westminster rather than reinvesting within local housing. As a result, 11 local authorities now have the opportunity to build their own council housing once again, and they and housing associations should be supported to develop further housing as quickly as possible. These statistics and lived experiences speak for themselves. Therefore, how can His Majesty’s Government address this housing crisis?

Plaid Cymru believes that everybody has the right to a safe and affordable home in their community and that this should be the purpose of the housing system. We believe that introducing a right to adequate housing will underpin this. This right should be more than aspirational; it should be enforceable, providing citizens with a legally backed guarantee that their homes will meet acceptable standards for health and safety. Such a transformative approach is needed to truly address the needs of low-income households and struggling communities. This would reinforce the belief that housing is a fundamental human right.

To address the issue of soaring rents in the private rental sector, His Majesty’s Government could introduce rent controls, which could safeguard against unjustified rent increases and housing insecurity. Rent controls should be progressive and based on the residual income measure, ensuring that no rent leaves tenants unable to meet essential needs. This measure should apply to the cheapest 30% of rental properties, capping rents at local housing allowance rates; for the remaining 70% of rental properties, rent controls could be linked to housing quality, encouraging landlords to improve property standards. This could be modelled on systems in the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, also pointed to those countries as examples.

I add my support to the calls made by the noble Baroness, Lady Winterton, on changes to eligibility for housing allowance for under-35s. We could have a whole other debate on the impact that the current housing crisis will have in the long term, especially on declining birth rates. It will impact future generations.

To close, I ask the Minister to address in her remarks at the end of the debate her views on enshrining a right to adequate housing into law and on introducing rent controls. Have His Majesty’s Government looked outward to see what we can learn from other countries that have them in place? Our communities deserve real solutions that deliver safe, affordable homes. Diolch yn fawr.