Category: prs

Homelessness and housing charity, Shelter, has suggested that private rents are 64% more expensive than social rents, and the solution they are presenting is a change in tone that private landlords may welcome.

Much like politicians, a great deal of sentiment from tenant groups has been critical of private landlords, with the community often being held directly responsible for the plight of tenants and prospective home owners.

The private rental sector (PRS), by contrast, would point to decades of housebuilding targets being missed by successive governments and political parties, and plenty of data that shows that this and the cheap cost of borrowing, is actually the responsible factors making housing in the UK unaffordable.

The scale of the problem

Shelter has said that private tenants in England pay, on average, £828 more than social tenants per month in rent. The charity propose that if there was more social housing, this would mean that the huge volumes of people struggling to afford homes would save thousands per year.

This argument is one that is refreshingly not critical of the PRS, logical and could truly help renters.

A message that private landlords may welcome

For so long the argument has been that private landlords should, in effect, rent property at a loss so that tenants can afford to rent.

Which is a bit like saying to all supermarkets they must sell their food at a loss because people can’t afford to eat.

If any business is unprofitable it folds.

But, the housing industry needs unity and mutual, 360 degree support to find and implement practical solutions that are workable and effective for all.

Speaking for Shelter, chief executive Polly Neate had this to say on the need for more social housing:

Social housing enables people to live better lives, but we just don’t have enough of it – not by a long shot. Decades of failure to build genuinely affordable social homes has left the country in a dire state.

We continually hit shameful records with numbers of homeless children and sky-high rents, as more and more families are plunged into homelessness. For many this means years of upheaval and uncertainty, stripping the chance for families to set down roots, for children to thrive at school and taking the power away from people to live the life they want.

The housing emergency has been wilfully ignored for too long. All the signs point to one solution and it's the only one that works. Now that a General Election has been called we cannot afford to waste any time. All political parties must commit to building genuinely affordable social homes - we need 90,000 a year over ten years to end the housing emergency for good.

With the record for housebuilding in this country being what it is, radical change would be necessary to fulfil Shelters hopes. And arguably funding will not be able to be found from social rents so would have to be found elsewhere.