The housing crisis

This content applies to England only.

England is suffering a massive housing crisis. There simply aren’t enough decent, affordable homes.

The number of new households is increasing faster then the number of house builds, causing house prices to triple and private rents to more than double over the past decade. More than two million people find their rent or mortgage a constant struggle or are falling behind with payments.  

Nearly 1.7 million households are currently waiting for social housing. [1] Some homeless households - many with dependent children - wait for years in temporary accommodation. Families renting privately on low incomes have to put up with poor living conditions and little security.

Second home ownership is pricing local people out of many rural areas. Against a background of increasing debt across the country, increasing numbers of homeowners are having their homes repossessed, because they are no longer able to keep up with mortgage repayments.

And at the sharpest end, many hundreds of people sleep rough on the streets every night, cold and fearing for their safety.

Shelter believes this situation is unacceptable.

The housing crisis in numbers

• Nearly 1.7 million households are currently on local authority housing waiting lists [2]
• more than one million children in England live in bad housing [3]
• in 2006/07, 554,000 households in England were overcrowded [4]
• In 2007 repossessions rose to 27,100 from 22,400 the previous year, and it is predicted that 45,000 homes will be repossessed in 2008.[5]
  
• 8.1 million homes in England fail to meet the Government's Decent Homes Standard [6]
• the UK is now more polarised by housing wealth than at any time since the Victorian era
• in 2007, almost 100,000 households were found to be homeless by local authorities - almost twice as many as in 1997 [7]
• during 2006/07, Shelter services in England worked with nearly 3,900 single men, women and couples without children, who were street homeless [8]
• at the end of December 2007, 79,500 households were living in temporary accommodation arranged by local authorities. Nearly 60,000 of these households had dependent children. [9]

Home is more than just a roof over your head

Housing is an issue that affects every one of us. We all know how important having a decent home is. From our health and emotional well-being, to our achievement in education and our ability to get work, where we live has an enormous impact on our lives.

A home is a place that provides security, privacy, decent living conditions, and links to a community. A home must be suitable to the needs of its residents – providing adequate space, affordable costs and linked support where necessary.

Bad housing matters

Homelessness isn’t only about people sleeping on the streets. There are many more homeless people living in temporary or unsuitable housing. Homelessness can be a temporary problem, with people experiencing episodes of homelessness in between more settled periods.

Bad housing covers a wide range of issues, including overcrowding, insecurity of tenure, poor living conditions and deprived neighbourhoods. Bad housing affects people from all backgrounds, but some communities are disproportionately affected. For example, in 2007, black and ethnic minorities represented just under a quarter of all households found to be homeless in England despite making up only 11% of the total population. [10]

Everyone should have a home

Shelter believes that everyone should have a home. Given the enormous impact housing has on people's lives and its wider effects on society as a whole, we believe that access to decent housing should not be dictated by the whims of an increasingly volatile property market. We campaign for better housing policies and laws to end homelessness.

Preventing homelessness

Shelter campaigns for better policies to tackle and prevent homelessness, both in terms of immediate responses to the current crisis and finding lasting long-term solutions.

Improving existing housing

With a national shortage of social housing and an affordability crisis in the property market, low income households are increasingly having to rely on a poorly regulated private rented sector to meet their housing needs, where security of tenure and living conditions are poor.

Shelter campaigns for improvements across all three sectors (social-rented, private-rented and owner-occupied) to ensure people have secure and decent homes.

Building more homes

With nearly 1.7 million households currently on local authority housing waiting lists and a huge under-supply of family-sized properties, the ultimate solution to the current housing crisis is to build more homes. Shelter supports the Government pledge to build three million new homes by 2020 and is campaigning to ensure that a proportion of these homes are affordable and suitable for families.

These new homes should be environmentally-friendly and provide adequate amenities to foster communities where people can thrive.

Improving neighbourhoods

Bad housing is closely linked to many wider social problems that blight neighbourhoods, such as crime and anti-social behaviour. Shelter believes these problems can be best addressed once underlying housing issues have been resolved.

[1] Housing Strategy Statistical Appendix Data 2007, Communities and Local Government, 2008. Annual Digest of CORE Data 2006/07 www.core.ac.uk.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Against the Odds report, Shelter, London, 2006.

[4] Survey of English Housing Preliminary Results 2006/07, Communities and Local Government, 2007.

[5] Council of Mortgage Lenders, 2008. 

[6] English House Condition Survey 2006 Headline Report, CLG 2007.

[7] Statutory Homelessness Statistics, Communities and Local Government 2008.

[8] Shelter 2007.

[9] Statutory Homelessness Statistics, Communities and Local Government 2008.

[10] Statutory Homelessness Statistics, Communities and Local Government 2008.; UK Census 2001, Office for National Statistics.