Taking housing fight to south east

Although the housing crisis has hit the entire UK to varying degrees, it has become an entrenched and alarming problem in the South East – earlier this year it was revealed that there is not one single city or town in the area where house prices are less than seven and a half times average local incomes.

According to the National Housing Federation, the south east needs to build 39,000 new homes every year from 2011 until 2031 to keep pace with demand. The Rightmove website says that the average house price in the South East is £362,210 – varying from £492,000 in Surrey to £222,000 in the Isle of Wight. Prices are up 13 per cent since 2013.

While London is often seen to be the paragon of the UK’s housing crisis, the south east towns of Oxford and Winchester are officially the most unaffordable in the country, with average house prices more than 10 times that of local wages.

If you live in the South East and want to buy a house, you’re likely to need on average an astonishing 146 per cent pay rise.

The situation for who must opt for private rented accommodation is even worse.

According to housing charity Shelter, parts of the South East are defined as `home threat hotspots’, with one in five renters in some parts living under the threat of eviction.

While the area has very low unemployment compared to the rest of the UK, wages simply aren’t enough to keep up with how much it costs to keep a roof over your head. Indeed, nearly one in three who are in receipt of housing benefit in the South East are actually in work.

Unite Community believes that the housing crisis plaguing the South East and the rest of the UK can change if people stand together and demand government action.

As part of a campaign to do just that, Unite Community has hit the road on a 15-city fact-finding tour of the South East to hear local people’s concerns about housing and to make the case for a mass council building programme in the area.

Unite is setting up stalls to engage with people and conduct a survey of local people on what housing issues are most important to them and will be using an interactive game to get people voting on housing matters.

The stall will give members of the public a ‘golden bean’ which they can use to vote on the issue they are most concerned about including: exploitative landlords; shortage of affordable housing; the Housing Act; and selling off of council houses.

The South East Housing Crisis Roadshow is the build up to a regional day of action on Saturday, October 1, where Unite Community activists will be taking part in a mass coordinated action, calling on the government to address the housing crisis that is hitting communities across the south east.

Unite Community will be stopping at towns across the region, including Oxford, Ramsgate, Crawley, Isle of Wight and many more.

Can’t ‘borrow to build’

“Unite is very concerned about the housing crisis in the south east,” said Unite’s South East community coordinator Kelly Tomlinson. “One of the biggest obstacles that councils face in building new council homes is that they can’t ‘borrow to build’.

“So councils need to put pressure on the government to change the law to allow them to deliver on building more affordable homes,” she added. “However, councils could do more to protect private tenants and police landlords whose properties are not up to standard.

“House prices are unaffordable for average families and renting is sky-rocketing,” Tomlinson noted. “There is a lack of affordable housing and local authorities are not building new council houses to provide the homes that are desperately needed.

“Unite wants to get the general public aware of the myriad issues relating to housing and encourage them to work with the union to campaign for homes for all.”

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner said that the South East is only the tip of the iceberg in a housing crisis that’s spiralling out of control.

“The housing crisis in the South East sheds light on what’s happening throughout the UK – more and more people simply aren’t able to afford the most basic necessity that is housing,” Turner noted. “And it’s getting worse each and every year as this government – which does not have the words ‘long-term thinking’ in its vocabulary – sits back and allows it all to happen.

“But it doesn’t have to be this way,” he added. “We can build the million new council homes this country needs. We can introduce rent controls that protect those in what is now the least regulated private rental market in all of Europe. We can turn the idea that housing is a human right into a lived reality for all.

“Investing in housing means investing an economy that works for everyone,” Turner argued. “If the government won’t listen, we’ll make them – that’s why campaigns such as those now being undertaken by Unite Community are so important.”

Find out more about Unite Community’s Housing Crisis Roadshow, including how you can get involved and when the show will be stopping in your town, here.

@hajera_blagg