The kids competing on Junior Bake Off know it. In the first episode of the latest season in January, Charlie said he thought there needed to be more affordable housing, and he baked a ‘solar powered house for all’ cake. He might have forgotten to put a door on it, but I think we can forgive him for that.
Ikea know it. They’ve opened displays in their stores called ‘Real Life Roomsets’. Each one tells a real life story of someone’s life in temporary accommodation. They’ve done it in partnership with Shelter, whose research shows that one in five people are worried about losing their home, and half say if they lost their home they would struggle to find somewhere else to live.
So, everyone knows there’s a housing crisis, don’t they?
Not everyone it seems … This month we had a budget from the government that had £200 million of funding for potholes, which was £200 million more than it had for housing.
This prompted Shelter to tweet: “A Budget to fill holes but not to tackle growing homelessness. The huge ‘pot-hole’ the government isn’t trying to fill in with its #Budget2023 today is housing – it’s left struggling renters in fear of homelessness and swimming in a pool of debt and sky high rents.”
I can’t deny this is frustrating. But there are some grounds for optimism. There are welcome moves to strengthen regulation in rented housing. The government is increasingly willing to fund ‘social rent’ homes rather than the more expensive ‘affordable rent’. There’s an ambition in Cornwall, as part of the proposed devolution deal, to double the amount of affordable housing built. All steps in the right direction.
And as always, at times like this when it’s difficult to see how the housing crisis will be solved, the best thing we can do is focus on taking the next step. As we set out in our Coastline Plan, it’s important for us to be ambitious and positive, and if we take that approach, we will inspire ourselves and others to take the right steps, in the right direction.
Words by Allister Young, CEO of Coastline Housing