Guest blog: Shelter's Chief Exec on the rise of unaffordable housing

[JessMumsnet]

This week, to highlight the fact that housing is increasingly unaffordable for many, Shelter published research which showed what our weekly shop would cost if food prices had risen to the degree that housing costs have done over the last decade.

In this guest blog, Shelter's Chief Exec Campbell Robb warns that unless something changes, the next generation will find it even tougher to get a stable and affordable home.

What do you think? Are you struggling to get on the property ladder, with rising rents making it increasingly difficult to save for a deposit - or are you worried for your children's prospects? How do you think the situation could be improved? Post your URLs here if you blog on the subject, or tell us what you think here on the thread.

roneik - that's still the case with contributions based jobseekers. Which was the only one that dh qualified for when he was made redundant, (quite rightly) as I was working.

And it's not a case of pitting one generation against another really. You can see up thread examples of people from my generation who will be disadvantaged if house prices fall, or policies are put into place to discourage using homes as an investment.

It's about balancing the needs of the majority with the wants of the minority. Which is the majority, which is the majority? What is a need and what is a want? That's the tricky bit (well, one of them anyway). Does a family of four need more than one bedroom? Does a single pensioner need three?

I see, MoreBeta.

I would agree with you, but I think in a civilised society we should all help pay for the old, the young and the infirm.

But then I really don't think vast amounts of inherited wealth is fair either. So on balance, yes, let those who have houses sell them to pay for their care. I think.

But then no-one inherits anything, the house is probably sold to someone rich who doesn't need it or is going to let it out at an exorbitant price and not look after it or knock it down and build a supermarket in its place. Nothing is done to help the housing crisis and young families still can't afford a house to live in.

I know - compulsory purchase orders. The council buys the house that the old person sells to pay for her care. Then the family of the old person move in and pay rent to the council - which also helps pay for Grannie's care, build more houses, fund hospitals, etc.

Would that work, do you think?

I think I would agree with you, MoreBeta, if the council bought the house and used it for someone to live in.

The family of the old person (ime) almost never moves in to the inherited property. Families just don't generally live that close to each other any more.

An exception obv is where a child has been living with the parent, and possibly providing a lot of care, in which case I think exceptions should be allowed (I'm not sure if that's the case or not at the moment - don't think so).

Moved 70 miles away from our families and have never inherited. Never will. Now just a very modest semi 45 miles out of London. Son and daughter have only just clung to housing ladder with our help, but too many people are IMO chasing too few houses and this puts the prices up. No handouts, all our housing costs have always been met by us, with a struggle at times. Never easy.

Interestingly, my parents' street - which was all families when we moved there in the late 70s - has gone through a cycle of getting greyer and greyer and now going back to elderly people dying and properties going back on the market.

They're (mostly 3 beds) being bought by professional couples without children in their 40s and 50s though. Not by the young families that they were originally built for, despite local amenities and schools being good. Presumably they're still priced out. I actually can't remember when I last saw a child in that street that wasn't someone's grandchild.

well said roneik. Also I don't think people had the expectations that our own kids have. Society has become so materialistic (myself included).

Oh, and my dad was earning probably the equivalent of about £25k in today's terms when they moved in. My mum was a SAHM.

pmsl

A cheer went up at the far end of the village green. It woke me from the daydream I was enjoying whilst gazing into the fire. The pot of soup hanging from the tripod would soon be ready, and myself and my family were hungry. That seemed less important now.

I stood up, and noticed the others around the campsite doing the same. We all looked toward where the cheer had come from. We knew what it meant. It was happening more frequently now, that last one was only 3 weeks ago.

I saw the family quite quickly this time, the wife was leading them through the campsite, weaving between the tents. Without exception the people on their route stood and applauded. The husband was red faced, and looked shocked. He kept turning his head, making sure his daughter was keeping up with them.

No more living outside for them. No more living in a tent. I was pleased for them, but still couldn't help but wonder when it would be our turn. The winter was just beginning, they were lucky with the timing.

The thought crossed my mind again, how crazy it was that it had come to this. It wasn't that long ago that the death of a parent was a sad event, not a cause for celebration. But now it was that family that were the lucky ones, finally moving into a REAL HOUSE of their own. Finally inheriting a home. Incredible.

The family had gone from the village green, and were racing down a side street towards their property. I watched the others sit back down again, many were attending their own soup pots hanging over their fires like I was. It was getting dark now and we all wanted some warmth inside us.

Not for the first time, I hoped for the day when all boomers would be gone, and we could start again, living indoors.

Just Imagine That.

Monday tuesday-do you and other families live in a tent in uk?

Heard and seen tented cities in usa.

Neither my mil or my parents would want us living with them.

I couldent wait to move out, we didet get on there ere no jobs in mams rural town.

This recession despite being triple dip so different to last theres been a lending crunch but no crash houses here holding their own.

Cany see anything being done as not in the propery owners interests.

I detest council tax as based on value of home but if rent what does value mean to me?maybe lanords should pay tennants council tax that seems fair ad council tax 2nd homes should be drasticlly high.

I see lots of upmarket cars and jeeps driven by people that rent around my way, and that makes me think back to when I was saving to buy when young.
We had an old banger for years. I was made redundant before I got to retirement age so had to trade down to what my pay could reach to without constant worry.Up here in the north east you can buy a 3 bed house for 70k and a poor condition one for less. So here?s one southern boomer that hat to uproot to the north many miles from relatives in order to have a roof that wasn?t rented. My point being the economy should not be concentrated in the south and people have to make sacrifices if they want to buy a home.
Also previous governments should have seen technology was to take away so many jobs and prepared the economy to cope with less jobs for more people. My answer would be build houses on masse, and that would create some jobs and liberate the economy.
Rents would fall if there were not a shortage of accommodation. How can the economy recover when rents are taking such a big proportion of incomes?

the thing is though it won't effect those who get 'vast inherited wealths' - they can pay for the care without touching the bulk of their estate.

it will effect those who would have managed to leave 50k to each of their 2 children helping them get a foot on the property ladder and a few grand to each of their grandchildren to help pay towards uni fees.

if you want to hit truly vast inheritances you need serious inheritance tax.

my aunt inherited loads of stocks and shares and money from her husband. her second husband did well for himself too. her children with fully paid for educations and very encouraging parents also did fantastically well for themselves and already owned their homes outright and were earning 6 figure sums by the time their mother died. the money she left meant each of them went out and bought another property outright to rent out as an investment. but my god you should have heard the moaning and bewailing of having to pay a bit of inheritance tax.

my parents may leave 150k i'd guess - they have 2 dds both single parents and 4 grandchildren. my guess is they'd leave a third to me, a third to my sister and a third between the gc. making them spend their house on care if they needed it would mean me in all likelihood never being able to buy again or have any capital investment for my retirement (after losing a home in the last recession due to combo of housing price crash, my son's birth and ill health meaning not being able to work for a while) therefore being a bigger 'drain' on society when i'm older and being able to invest less in my son's education and chances of being genuinely financially independent.

meanwhile those leaving fortunes of ten million untouched.

also in my experience mortgages are cheaper than rent anyway - so this struggle to buy a home business is nonsense. if you can get a mortgage you will have cheaper housing.

my mortgage was way less than my rent is in a HA property and had the flexibility that when times were good i could pay in more and when not pay less. rent is just rent and it goes up over and over with no option for shopping around for a better fixed rate or such.

Morebeta - council houses are not rented at 'below market rates'. Council house rents were set at a fair cost reflecting the cost of land and building. Private rents and house prices have gone crazy for a variety of reasons, but that's not the fault of council tenants. You can't turn round and punish them because the housing market is entirely dysfunctional.

swallowed, that's nonsense. People can't buy because they can't save for a deposit, what with sky-high rents eating up their incomes plus 0.5% or less interest on savings - below inflation. So anything you save is actually losing value.

err i did say 'if you can get a mortgage'. my point was that the running cost of a mortgage was considerably lower for me than my rent is and that was before ridiculously low interest rates

I agree with roneik. Most of the people I know with mortgages struggled to pay them and had a constant worry of not affording them. And when the interest rates hit 16% people had to downsize or lost their home altogether. It just simply isn't true that people had it easy. Also tax credits are a relatively new thing. In the early 1980's huge numbers of people lost their jobs as a lot of heavy industry closed.

£25 is about average starting salary for graduates in London, I think. DS1's friends studied a variety of subjects and only the lawyers go tmuch more than that. He pays £630 for his room now and lives there alone, saves a bit. If he seriously wanted to buy somewhere he would have to either save for ages or move in with us for a bit. Most of the younger people who work with me either stay at home or move back in for a while to save for a house.

It seems to me that Thatcher was the architect of unaffordable housing, water, fuel etc with her privatisation, selling council houses etc. A thoroughly toxic set of policies.

I think you might be a bit off on that, higgle. Maybe it is, and maybe the grads I know are very unlucky, of course.

I don't know so many people whose parents can afford to have them back home, but I agree it is really nice when parents who're well off help their children up. My parents are good to us (though thank god they never assumed we'd 25k starting salaries!).

I googled hoping to find a site I would know was reputable - I didn't, but this was the first result, which may be pessimistic, but was interesting:

graduatefog.co.uk/2012/2187/average-graduate-salary-10000/

In the last bad recession interest rate went to 17% people lost jobs , and now as then some will prosper on the back of misery. interest rates and Q/ easing have saved buy to let and made saving unattractive and in some cases impossible.In 2007 I thought that the same thing would happen with rates and as I was on a low wage got out of mortgage paying by trade down.
Not easy when you are getting old starting all over in an area where you know nobody
The north grows on you after a while

I don't know anyone who started on 25K (except maybe a doctor or two). It might be the average starting salary for a graduate job, but those are few and far between these days. The vast majority of my friends scrabbled around in bar jobs, internships, temping and other low paid stuff for a good 5 years after graduation.

But if you've been a doctor, you've clocked up more debt, is that right?

A friend of mine has just got her first permenent job for something in the mid-20s, but she has spend 8 years training for it, so she has that much more debt. So she still can't get a mortgage.

i certainly didn't earn anywhere near 25k as a graduate. after post graduate studies i earned 19k - 25k sounds good as a first graduate job. sadly most people i know were forced into low paid work to start trying paying back debts and to keep a roof over there head when the loans stopped.

i'm sure it helps if mummy and daddy can afford to put you up and hold your hand but most people i knew didn't have that option.

also moving north isn't really an option as generally lower house prices come with lower salaries. it is gobsmacking to see the levels of qualifications, experience, car ownership and responsibility demanded for pitiful wages (way under that mythical 25k believe me) in the job adverts here and i'm central rather than north.

I was earning £25 as a teacher with 20 years' experience. But the young people I mentioned above who earn that live in London.