Housing has dominated this week’s news agenda. On Monday Michael Gove announced his new “long-term plan for housing”. On Tuesday, government released statistics that showed there are 131,370 children living in temporary accommodation – the highest level since records began. A reasonable person might ask: how will Michael Gove’s long-term plan make a difference to those children?
The housing crisis in this country is worsening. It is caused by decades of short-term, often contradictory policymaking and chronic under-investment. In 2010, funding for affordable housing was cut by 63 per cent, including all funding for social rented homes. This was the biggest cut to any capital budget at the time. Although rules were later relaxed to allow some social rented homes to be built, this caused a catastrophic 81 per cent fall in delivery of new social housing. Last year around 7,500 were built, compared to nearly 40,000 back in 2010.
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