TV review from Mark Langabeer, Hastings and Rye Labour Member
A central part of the cost of living crisis is the shortage of affordable homes, whether to buy or to rent. This is particularly true in tourist areas, where the surge in second home ownership is squeezing out local people.
An ITV Tonight programme aired last week, brought some of these problems to light. Called Priced Out, The Truth about Holiday Homes, the programme gave a glimpse of the crisis in affordability of homes for the majority, particularly in popular tourist destinations.
There are around 500,000 second homes in this country, many of them concentrated in holiday towns. Whitby, in North Yorkshire, for example, has seen the number rise from 500 in 2002 to 1,700 today. The extent of the problem was expressed by a young solicitor, who despite her relatively high income, was unable to buy an average three-bedroom house in the town.
Nationally, the average home costs £241,000 and the average monthly rent is an astonishing £926 a month. This is unaffordable for most people, particularly in tourist areas, where average wages are even lower than the national average. In the face of the astronomical increases in energy costs, it beggars belief how any normal family can afford accommodation in these towns.
Well beyond the means of most ordinary workers
The programme presenter, Helen Skelton, interviewed a woman who had been served a ‘no fault’ eviction notice and her family were having to live with a relative. Renting was not only unaffordable but it was often subject to conditions, like ‘no pets’ and even in some cases, ‘no children’. Skelton reported that Cornwall has 12,000 second homes and 20,000 on the council house register. Here, an average house costs £300,000 well beyond the means of most ordinary workers, where the average yearly wage is only £20,000.
Whitby in North Yorkshire where the number of second homes has more than tripled in the last ten years.
Skelton also interviewed a man in Cumbria, who said that most people his age had moved away from the area because their income had simply not kept pace with house prices and rents. The Government’s response to this crisis has been limited to a few modest restrictions on ‘no fault’ evictions and the doubling of council tax on second homes.
In Wales, the Labour-controlled Assembly, has quadrupled council tax on second homes, with the aim of using the extra income for new social housing to be built. In some areas, second home ownerships are excluded from new builds. Will these policies succeed in improving affordability? I would suggest that it would only be a council house building programme, combined with rent controls that can even start to solve this problem.
‘Market forces’ can’t solve the housing crisis
The Tories are wedded to the idea that only ‘market forces’ and profit can solve the housing crisis, but it is precisely the profit market that has generated this crisis. Housing experts are suggesting a ‘cooling’ of house prices because of the impact of the rising cost of living and higher interest rates, but that is not a foregone conclusion. In any case, the experts are still predicting that rents will continue to rise.
The Labour Party ought to demand a freeze on rents and should promote the building of social housing and homes that are affordable. Starmer and the Labour front bench, unfortunately, believe that ditching the radical policies of the 2017/19 manifestos is the only way to win a general election, but such an approach will be a handicap to any Labour campaign. Half measures and Starmer’s Tory-lite policies will only disappoint. There has never been a better time for bold socialist measures to tackle the national housing crisis:
- Public ownership of the big building corporations
- Public ownership of all development land
- For a national house-building corporation, to build and to finance local authority council house building at affordable rents
- Rent controls across the private sector, so that families pay only a limited proportion of their income in rent.
- Municipalisation of all large landlord companies with lots of properties.
