Britain’s Housing Crisis: Whose Voice Counts?

Nora Redmond argues that Britain’s housing crisis is self-made, stemming not only from poor policy, but also from the interventions of wealthy residents against the building of necessary social housing

Photo by Emily Wang (taken from unsplash.com)

In March 2022, a poll found that two-thirds of people believe that poverty is the root cause of the issues which may lead to homelessness in the UK. Of these issues, half selected alcohol or drug addiction as the number one driver of becoming homeless. 

In reality, homelessness is not an inevitable result of “bad life choices” — it’s about bad policy. Owning a home has become too expensive. Public discourse has been dictated by a perception that to be homeless is to sleep rough on the streets. While they are the most visible homeless people, tens of thousands of households receive homelessness assistance every year. Over 278,000 households were at risk of becoming homeless in 2021/2022. A quarter were in part-time or full-time employment. 

The UK’s housing crisis is for the most part due to a chronic lack of affordable housing. It helps to look back to August 1980, when Margaret Thatcher’s government created the Housing Act. Here, the Right to Buy scheme was extended, allowing council tenants to purchase their homes with major discounts. From this point onwards, the number of council homes rapidly decreased because as homes were being bought, they weren't being replaced. Matched with the relaxation of mortgage lending and furthered by an expansion of the rental market with the “buy-to-let initiative”, not enough affordable housing has been built. Over 21,000 social housing dwellings were sold or demolished in 2021/2022, with forty councils across England not building any council homes between 2016 and 2021. 

It is the general consensus that Britain has a housing crisis; what’s less accepted is that it lies in the fact that affordable housing is just not being built. Many agree that more homes need to be constructed — just as long as it’s not in their areas. Community input seems an important part of democracy, but perhaps what we’re seeing is too much community input. Local resistance has become pivotal to blocking the essential building of social housing. Richmond Council approved plans for a block of flats in March 2018 despite local disapproval. The proposals were described by one member of the community as “ghastly, bland, monolithic suburban architecture”, and the Liberal Democrats succeeded in cancelling the scheme after taking power two months later. 

In 2021/2022, the City of London and Richmond had the lowest number of affordable housing starts funded by the General London Authority, with zero and 48 starts respectively. This is compared to the Borough of Southwark, which had 2,090 starts. Richmond came under fire for nimbyism when a campaign was launched against the planning of six high-rise residential buildings in Stratford. The fear was that St Paul’s Cathedral would no longer be seen on a clear day from King Henry VII’s Mound. Apparently “not in my back yard” extends to fifteen miles across the city. 

Many have deemed the deliberate rejection of council housing proposals a form of “social cleansing”. There are few parts of the UK where this rings as true as the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. In 2021, there were over 3000 people on the waiting list for housing in the borough with an average wait time of five years and eight months. Despite having one of the highest rates of homelessness in England, developers in Kensington and Chelsea used a legal loophole to avoid building a promised 700 social homes. In other words, enough to house each survivor of the Grenfell fire, which occurred in this very borough, and many others. Developers received planning permission by agreeing to construct a required share of affordable housing, but then escaped the commitment by arguing it would impact their profit margin. 

As thousands await housing, Kensington and Chelsea has approximately 1,916 vacant homes. More than a third have been empty for over two years. Unused accommodation is a wasted opportunity. It’s not that the borough lacks homes, it’s that the wealthiest homeowners, including oligarchs, business tycoons, and foreign royalty, are not letting go of their empty properties. Properties which are vacant for two to five years are already subjected to a 200% Council Tax, with tax increases of up to 300% for a property empty for longer than this. Importantly, however, a tax which is obviously unthinkable for the average homeowner is unlikely to sway multi-millionaires into selling their properties. 

A council is of course only so powerful in what it can achieve. What the UK really needs is a government that is willing to implement drastic housing policy changes. But the role of the individual can also not be denied. Perhaps the wrong people have too much input, as wealthy residents repeatedly block the building of essential affordable housing. At present, the most privileged have protected that privilege by keeping lower-income people out