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What should we expect from a home?

New research shows that four in ten aren’t good enough

October 21, 2016
©Matt Crossick/Matt Crossick/Empics Entertainment
©Matt Crossick/Matt Crossick/Empics Entertainment

A home is where you feel safe and secure, where you can put down roots, raise a family and feel like part of the community. A place that goes beyond bricks and mortar; a place where you can thrive, not just survive. Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity, works to ensure that everybody has a place they can call home—a task made harder by the housing crisis. And for our 50th year, we wanted to find out exactly what home means to people in Britain today, and gauge what everybody should expect from a home.

With the support of British Gas and the research expertise of Ipsos MORI, we spent a nine-month period asking the public through a series of discussion groups, workshops and surveys. The result is the Living Home Standard: 39 attributes over the five dimensions of affordability, space, decent conditions, stability and neighbourhood. It combines criteria that are “essential” for all homes to meet and those which are “tradable.” For one person being free from traffic noise might be essential, another might be happy to live on a busy main road because it means they’re closer to work.

Shockingly, we found that four in ten homes in Britain today fail to meet the essential criteria of this standard; a reflection of just how bad our housing crisis has become. The majority fail on affordability—over a quarter of people felt they could not meet their housing costs without having to cut spending on essentials like food or heating, or were living in fear that a rent rise or slight drop in income would leave them unable to pay.

Our research also uncovered the extent to which people are having to deal with poor conditions, with too many people living in houses infested with pests, damp and mould. A powerful sense of instability is also hitting families that rent, with a lack of control over how long they can stay in their homes leaving many with no reassurance that their children can continue to attend their local school and not be uprooted in six months or a year.

It’s important to stress that we are not only talking about twentysomethings. We found that, while 58 per cent of 25-34 years olds failed the Living Home Standard, more than any other age group, 35-44 year olds were not far behind with over half failing, along with more than four in ten 45-54 years olds. The issues these individual groups face may vary, but it is quite clear that the housing crisis is touching people at all stages of life.

The Living Home Standard is the public telling us they want and need better from their homes—and we must listen. We now want to see a collaborative effort from government, business and charities to raise the number of homes in Britain that meet the Standard. There’s no single thing that can fix the housing crisis, but we can make a good start by building more genuinely affordable homes, helping councils to stamp out rogue landlords, and giving renters more stability.

The new government has already shown some signs of tackling these issues. We welcome Communities Secretary Sajid Javid’s commitment to increase funding for small and custom builders, for example, and its recognition that a few large developers simply can’t build all the homes we need. We are also pleased to see Housing Minister Gavin Barwell taking steps to clamp down on landlords who cram tenants into tiny rooms by announcing a new minimum bedroom size for shared homes.

But clearly a great deal more is needed in order to build the million homes we need by 2020 and to ensure that they pass the Living Home Standard. We look forward to seeing what further plans the government set out in its forthcoming White Paper, backed up by stronger commitments by Chancellor Philip Hammond in his autumn statement. As well as helping to resolve the chronic undersupply of homes, new house-building policies could provide a boost to the UK economy as it navigates through post-Brexit uncertainty.

There is a great deal to be done but Shelter’s 50 year history is proof that change is possible. This is a huge problem but one we can tackle together, to ensure that everyone has a safe, secure and affordable place to call home.

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