It’s common consensus that it’s harder than ever to get a mortgage to get on the housing ladder, private rental rates are sky rocketing so it’s also harder for many to afford rented property and much of our social housing was sold off in the 80s and 90s, so where will the evicted live?
While I am not going soft on squatters and can’t believe that they actually had rights to remain in someone else’s property in the first place, it does once again pose the question of how challenging it is for some people to find a home, be it via rental or purchase.
The government has announced a number of initiatives over the past few weeks and months that will affect housing.
Along with the squatters’ rights announcement and the crackdown on landlords renting out ‘beds in sheds’ to illegal immigrants, there is also Cameron’s declaration to relax planning laws on new housing developments; these are all on top of the Funding for Lending scheme, MMR and any EU legislation that may raise its head.
However, I question how joined up any of these initiatives are and whether they will actually make it easier for potential home owners to get on the housing ladder.
It appears to me that it’s not really clear whether most of these are to be central government or regional initiatives or whether a single person was overseeing them or if they are all just individual bright ideas.
Let’s hope that the new housing minister Mark Prisk will deliver a clearly joined up strategy to tie up all these initiatives together and deliver an end-to-end solution rather than continue with the strategy of a few piecemeal ideas, as one thing seems clear, if a joined up solution is not found to the housing crisis, the problem will continue to be pushed from one area to another.
Jon Round is chief executive of First Complete
