‘A home for everyone in our nation’: Plaid promise to build 50,000 homes and tackle homelessness

Plaid Cymru have said that it is a “scandal” that 11,500 households in Wales are homeless while 26,000 homes and flats in Wales are empty.

The party’s Caerphilly candidate, Delyth Jewell said that the pandemic had “shone a light” on the fact that the need for everyone in Wales to have a safe and secure home was currently going unmet.

The party has pledged to bring empty homes back into use and also to launch “the biggest public house building programme for fifty years”.

The party’s Caerphilly candidate, Delyth Jewell, said that if elected on May 6th a Plaid Cymru government would build or convert 50,000 public homes over the next five years.

They have promised to build 30,000 council houses or other social housing, 5,000 cost-rental homes at intermediate rent, and 15,000 affordable homes to buy.

“The pandemic has shone a light on the fact that not everyone in Wales has a safe and secure place to call home,” she said. “This is unacceptable.

“That is why a Plaid Cymru government would undertake the biggest public house building programme for fifty years to help the 67,000 households currently on housing waiting lists across Wales.

“This would be a five-year project including a combination of council houses or social housing, and genuinely affordable homes to buy.

“The programme will also commit to bringing some of the 26,000 empty homes and flats above shops across Wales back into use.

“It is a scandal that whilst these homes lay empty, around 11,500 households were recorded as being homeless in 2018-19.”

‘Crisis’

Delyth Jewell also committed to ending no-fault evictions and implementing a new system of fair rents for the future.

“It is shameful that 41% and 48% of renters in private and social housing respectively, live in poverty, which is why we need a new system of fair rents for the future,” she said.

“A Plaid Cymru government would be committed to going further than any Labour government before us, tackling the housing crisis once and for all and working towards our goal of securing a home for everyone in our nation.”