Ask most people about housing today, and few will say they’re not worried. A private tenant concerned about the precarity; a family languishing on council housing waiting lists; an older homeowner worried their children won’t be able to afford to buy a home: few people think everything’s rosy when it comes to bricks and mortar.
But equally, few people have a clear idea of what the future of housing holds. Could it be a continuation of rocketing house prices and unprecedented levels of homelessness? A crash that lets many people on to the housing ladder, while leaving millions of others in negative equity?
Housing charity Shelter has collaborated with Nationwide Building Society to produce a morphological analysis of four potential futures for the UK’s housing problem.
The charity had hoped to have campaigned itself out of existence by now, but the country is again facing a housing crisis. “It has been 50 years since Shelter was founded and, whilst the slums of the 60s are thankfully gone, a housing crisis is once again taking a huge toll on millions of ordinary families across the country. This is the tragic result of successive governments’ failure to address the root cause of our housing problems,” says Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter. “Things will only change when politicians start investing in homes that people on lower incomes can afford.”
Shelter’s analysis highlights a shift in values in the UK, from authority and hierarchy to autonomy and diversity. Can this shift impact housing policy? The charity explores this in its four visions for the future of housing.
1. Local and community led – but fragmented
In this scenario, responsibility for housing is locally devolved, and there’s an increase in community-led approaches, such as co-operatives, co-housing, and low-cost housing in exchange for care work.
But the localised nature of provision means that fragmentation is inevitable, with different areas having different levels of deprivation and need. Provision, including for the homeless, becomes increasingly uneven. Campaign groups find themselves spread thin, having to be both hyperlocal to connect to where the work is being done, while remaining national to press for consistency of standards and enforceable housing legislation.
2. Mass housebuilding – despite the skills shortage
Shelter’s second scenario foresees a mass housebuilding programme, while facing huge financial pressures due to land and building costs, and continuing skills shortages.
A rise in pre-fabricated homes and modular houses that can be adapted in terms of size will be more common to deal with changing needs, and a drive to build homes at lower costs. Homes being shipped along England’s roads will be a more common sight, because economic development takes longer than housebuilding, so homes that stand empty because there is no work nearby will be be moved closer to the work.
Despite pre-assembly, skills are in short supply, so quality sometimes suffersCampaigning increasingly focuses on minimum standards and keeping up the pressure on build rates. Campaigning is more national than local, and the housebuilding drive causes greater affiliation with party politics and interest in national parties, rather than local issues.
3. Renting rights – with fewer long term homes
In this scenario, private renting, rather than building, is the focus for public policy. Growing digital platforms amplify tenants’ concerns and allow them to rate landlords and circumvent the black market in unregulated landlords. The rights of tenants are more strongly enforced, but housing is seen as a transitive need, rather than a long-term home: workers are more likely to move often for work, and less likely to accumulate belongings and put down roots.
Politically, a greater shift occurs between those who live off finance and investments and those who do not, but Shelter says “productive capitalism” is rewarded. Homes that have been left empty by their owners for more than a year will be subject to compulsory lettings.
4. Little change – and an increasingly polarised society
The final scenario sees little change in the government approach to housing. Government intervention in the market is about bolstering and pump-priming rather than regulating costs. Attitudes towards housing are more individualistic: people are more insular and worried about their safety, whether they are homeowners installing razor wire and CCTV around their properties, or the people facing homelessness and left with weak legal frameworks, and reliant on charities.
Campaigning for housing rights is more necessary than ever. With little social mobility and an increasingly polarised society, housing is seen as both a nest egg and social crutch. Those who have lucked out and gained a foothold on the housing ladder are keen to protect and pass on their wealth even as they struggle to afford mortgage repayments and worry their investments have been overvalued. Anyone with housing protects themselves, creating a more individualist world.
- Shelter and Nationwide gave the Guardian exclusive access to their report.
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