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| ‘Building a quarter of a million new homes a year is not a sustainable solution. This is a small island,’ writes Dr Frances Holliss. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA |
Your article on the government’s housing white paper (English housing market ‘broken’, Javid admits at launch of white paper, 8 February) highlights many of the issues and hurdles we must overcome if we are to fix the “broken” housing market. But the omission of analysis of the impact of our ageing population ignores a fundamental reason why the market needs to be fixed. And while the white paper referenced some of the changes necessary, a significant amount of further work needs to be done. We know that over the next 25 years, the proportion of households where the oldest person is 85 or over will grow faster than any other age group, and homes that meet the needs of older people will be in greater demand.
Further understanding on housing options available and insight on what people themselves want to do should inform any measures that incentivise “downsizing”. There need to be appropriate and diverse housing options for people to move to, within the area they want to live and across all tenures. This includes new housing stock that is accessible, adaptable and affordable.
The white paper also addresses the need to change the private rental market, but does not take into account the specific needs of people in later life. There are an increasing number of older private renters – 200,000 older adults joined the rental market in the past four years, and it’s estimated that a third of over-60s could be living in private rental property by 2040. They could face non-regulated rents, loose landlord regulations, short-term tenancies, and houses in disrepair and not adapted for their needs. All these issues need to be addressed if the housing market is to meet the changing needs of our ageing population.
Dr Rachael Docking
Senior programme manager, Centre for Ageing Better
• Home ownership: you pay your mortgage off by the end of your working life. The result is that your much-reduced income in retirement is copeable. You also have an asset to help with your old-age care.
Long-term renting: you retire but your market rent remains payable for ever out of your much-reduced income. So, either you become destitute or (if society doesn’t want that) the taxpayer acquires a huge burden to pay by way of benefits. You also have no asset to help with your old-age care, again putting a burden on the taxpayer.
This is all down the road, but it will come unless the “long-term renting” concept is squashed now. So, if such a future worries you, make your views known to your MP and go to the “How to Respond” section on page 69 of the white paper.
Charles Garner
Newbury, Berkshire
• Broken indeed (The housing market is broken but these plans won’t fix it, Editorial, 8 February). A paradigm shift is needed to solve the housing crisis. Building a quarter of a million new homes a year is not a sustainable solution. This is a small island. Instead, why don’t we intensify the use of the existing building stock, half of which sits empty at any one time? Tax breaks could encourage the elderly to share large family homes with lodgers, simultaneously reducing loneliness and the need for care. And championing home-based work would result in fewer people going out to work, and therefore reduce the need for workspace. Excess light industrial and commercial space could then be converted into desperately needed housing.
Dr Frances Holliss
Emeritus reader in architecture, London Metropolitan University
• You are right to highlight the importance of housing demand, as well as need. For decades governments of all parties have stoked house prices. It is the way to win elections. Long-term undersupply is one cause of house price inflation, but far from the only cause.
However, your editorial is wrong to suggest that higher density developments must be small and poky. It is perfectly possible to build beautiful, spacious homes and apartments at high density, often with gardens: visit the Georgian terraces and squares of Bath or Kensington and Chelsea, or almost any city on the continent.
A theme of the housing white paper is that housebuilders need to raise their game. This applies not only to how many homes they build but also to their quality and design.
Shaun Spiers
Chief executive, Campaign to Protect Rural England
• According to its white paper, our government now claims the housing market is “broken”. This is mystifying: demand has greatly exceeded supply; prices have risen rapidly – is this not precisely what markets are expected to do? Can we hope that instead it is the previously unshakeable conservative belief in utility of markets that might be broken? Probably not.
Professor Robert Peveler
University of Southampton
• The government persists in relying on “the market” for the provision of something “the market” does not want to provide: economic housing. The simplest strategy, and one that would also bring down the cost of housing generally, would be to empower local authorities, again, to build and let houses and flats on modern leases, paid for with long-term finance. Council houses built nearly 100 years ago are still returning an income. “Buy to let” is part of the problem, not the answer. Repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is a sign of insanity.
Michael Heaton
Warminster, Wiltshire
• At a briefing meeting for peers on the housing white paper, I asked the secretary of state what proportion of the targeted number of homes to be built by 2020 would he expect to be built by councils and housing associations for affordable renting. Answer came there none.
A further question referring to the massive impact on the ability of councils and housing associations to invest in maintaining and improving the stock caused by the government’s imposition of rent reductions in the social housing sector merely elicited confirmation of the policy.
The modest proposals in the white paper will do little to address the housing crisis which has grown exponentially in the last few years.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
• One may not be surprised to realise that our current crisis in affordable housing is not new. In the early 1970s, shortly after writing Small is Beautiful, Ernst Schumacher wrote a pamphlet, Think About Land (originally published by the Catholic Housing Aid Society), in which he suggests a mechanism of land registration based on current, carefully estimated, values (allowing for zoning restrictions etc) and updated regularly using an agreed inflation index. In this way the impetus for “land developers” to buy cheap, possibly hoard, and sell dear in a market of by definition limited size, is minimised. No land can be sold privately at above this figure. If sold at a lower price this becomes the new “registered value”. He envisages the local authority as honest broker. He arrives at this solution after discounting the other, more radical, idea of taking all available land into public ownership (too expensive – or revolutionary). Intriguingly he calls this “a middle way”. Will anyone take up this idea?
Russell Ecob
Glasgow
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/feb/08/housing-white-paper-raises-more-questions-than-answers
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