Why we need to talk about affordability

by Tiffany Lam, Research Manager, Quality of Life Foundation

To tackle the housing crisis in the UK, we need to focus on addressing the supply, quality and affordability of housing. The supply of housing has been hogging the limelight for a while, with the much-vaunted (and never reached) figure of 300,000 new homes a year and a steady stream of people berating the planning system for getting in the way. And quality is something that the New Homes Quality Board and the Office for Place are meant to take care of. But what about affordability, the poor cousin of the housing crisis?

It’s time we raised the problem of affordability so that we promote quality of life for all, and not just those who can pay for it.

In 2017, Sir Michael Lyons wrote that “we would stress that it is not just the number built but also the balance of tenures and affordability which need to be thought through for an effective housing strategy.” And a House of Commons Research Briefing on tackling the under-supply of housing in England published in early February notes that there has been increased focus on addressing affordability as distinct from supply. According to research commissioned by the National Housing Federation and Crisis, there needs to be 145,000 new affordable homes each year until 2031, a figure that strengthens the case for more social rented housing development.

However, the current planning system cannot provide the social and affordable housing this country requires. Increased build costs arising from both domestic and international labour market and supply chain disruptions have considerably reduced social housing delivery in every region in England, particularly the north and midlands. The long-term undersupply of social and affordable housing in the UK, coupled with the short-term risks to affordable supply from escalating building costs, significantly jeopardise the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda to reduce regional inequalities. It also continues to widen health inequalities, which have worsened across the country, but especially in neighbourhoods of high deprivation where people spend more of their shorter lives in poor health compared to those in less deprived areas.