Social housing is a hot topic at the moment with the Grenfall scandal and the housing crisis highlighted in the run up to the recent general election. We are going to show you with the help of statistics from Shelter why house building is falling so short of demand fuelling the housing crisis
It’s been repeated like a mantra for far to long that there has been a ongoing decline in house building. In the case of local authorities depicted by the grey line you can see a cliff like drop of house building from the 1980’s onwards. From 1980 to 1995 council house building dropped from 130k units pa to all but nothing. The red line of the Housing Associations meanwhile have not built much above 30k pa over the same period and not succeeded in taking up the slack where local authorities have failed. The blue line of the private sector has been building no more than 215k new home per year. It peaks and busts moving in line with property prices. It dictates, as we all know private developers wont build when prices are falling. Experts has recommended building at least 250k new homes a year to meet demand. The big shock is local authorities no longer seem to be building despite the market and Housing associations and private developers are falling short as the call for more housing grows.
Government housing policy of the last four decades has assumed that the market will provide we have showed that this has definitely not been the case.
