According to JRF, the good news is the quality of housing has been steadily and substantially improving. However, the report details adverse shifts in housing supply, affordability and security of tenure, with high levels of unmet need.
The Housing and Neighbourhoods Monitor, a resource monitoring and analysing over 40 indicators on housing and neighbourhoods, assesses the government’s performance against its key targets in these areas. The NPI already produces the JRF’s influential annual UK report, monitoring poverty and social exclusion, and has done extensive research in housing and homelessness policy.
For many decades, the number of households has been growing much more quickly than the number of people, up by 35 per cent since 1971, compared with a population rise of just 8 per cent. This in large part reflects a significant increase in the number of adults living alone. Overall, the total number of homes has been keeping up with this household growth. However, the rate of household growth in England is projected to increase from 150,000 per year from 1991-2006 to 220,000 per year from 2006-2021 and this will require a substantial increase in the rate of house-building.
The number of new affordable homes being built for those who need subsidised housing is not keeping up with current demand, let alone addressing the substantial backlog. At 35,000 in 2005-2006, it is half the levels achieved in the mid-1990s, and well below the 48,000 that Kate Barker, in her report commissioned by the government, estimated as the minimum necessary.
Between 150,000 and 200,000 households are newly accepted as homeless each year in England, with high rates across the North and the West Midlands as well as London. Around two-thirds are provided with accommodation and the number of those placed in temporary, rather than permanent accommodation has more than doubled from the 1997 figure of 40,000 to reach 100,000 in 2006.
Housing costs have risen sharply for first-time buyers and the ratio of their mortgage costs to average earnings has, at 36 per cent, now reached the peak previously recorded in 1990. As a result, more than a third of all working households under 40 cannot now afford to buy even at the low end of the housing market. In the South of England, the situation is even worse, with half of all working households under 40 in this position.
Reversing a 15-year downward trend, court orders for repossessions have doubled since 2003. At the same time, only 20 per cent of all mortgage holders have a mortgage protection policy, compared with a government target of 55 per cent. Government help with mortgage costs has also diminished substantially over the past decade.
At around half a million households, non-take-up of housing benefit has doubled since 1997. Most of the decline in take-up rates occurred between 1998 and 2001, when the administrative performance of housing benefit also suffered a major decline.
The report's co-author Guy Palmer, said: “Our analysis points to worrying prospects for those on middle incomes and below. The most pressing policy challenges concern increasing affordability for first-time buyers and ensuring housing is available for those on low incomes. The government needs to refine the methods for judging regional and local imbalances between household growth and housing stock. It also needs to continue to improve the delivery of housing benefit.”
On a more positive note, the Housing and Neighbourhoods Monitor shows a steady and substantial improvement in some aspects of the quality of housing, such as ‘non-decent homes’, energy efficiency and fuel poverty, since at least the mid-1990s. Attitudes towards local neighbourhoods are also mostly positive, with only one in ten households expressing dissatisfaction with their local area. However, with the notable exception of traffic, people report that serious problems are more prevalent in deprived areas. For example, for those living in social rented accommodation or in disadvantaged areas, 15-20 per cent expressed dissatisfaction with their neighbourhoods (rising to 25 per cent in such areas of London).
Together, crime and vandalism are the most common reasons why people say their local area has been getting worse. Around half believe the local crime rate has been increasing, compared with only one in ten who feel it has been falling. But reported levels of both burglaries and violent crime have actually fallen by around half since the mid- 1990s. And reported levels of worry about being the victim of either a burglary or violent crime have also fallen (by a third) since the late 1990s.
