Paul Kershaw, Chair Unite housing workers LE1111 branch
Nearly three-quarters of residents surveyed by the Scottish Housing Regulator over the past year said they were concerned they will not be able to pay their rent over the next few years. The Social Housing Regulator in England does not have a similar survey but it is clear that there are affordability concerns across the country. In England, social landlords have successfully lobbied for a government commitment to above-inflation rent increases every year for the next decade. Unaffordable rents are a growing concern for many Unite members.
The research from Scotland shows that more than half of those polled cited rent rises as the reason for their worries. The English Housing Survey highlights that over a quarter (27%) of social renters find it difficult to pay their rent. The figure is significantly higher for young renters and for London tenants.
Unite Housing Workers’ branch members who work in social landlords and homelessness agencies report that people are increasingly excluded from social housing because their incomes are too low. In a survey for the homelessness charity, Crisis, around a third of English housing associations said that pre-tenancy affordability checks often brought to light information which led to an offer of housing being deemed unsuitable for an applicant. Around a quarter of responding housing associations also said that households below a certain income threshold are sometimes excluded from the housing register from which they receive applications for social housing lettings.
The government hopes to counter long-term underinvestment in the housing stock and to achieve their housebuilding targets on the basis of attracting private investment.
The key justification for the decade-long commitment to inflation-busting rent increases is the ‘need’ to offer the banks and investors a guaranteed long-term profit – at the expense of social tenants.
As a renewed cost-of-living crisis deepens in the autumn due to the impact of the Iran war and other causes; the crisis of housing affordability is set to deepen. The model of privately funded social housing is broken; we need an end to austerity housing policy with public investment to retrofit and upgrade the existing housing stock and a mass building programme of actually affordable council houses. Local councils should set needs-based budgets and protect their tenants with rent freezes.
