Minister pledges to act over housing crisis
The new Minister for Education and the Language has promised that the Government will tackle the housing crisis in the most Welsh-speaking areas.
Jeremy Miles said that action was needed “to ensure that we have Welsh-speaking communities that thrive in the future and that people can afford to live in their communities”.
On Radio Cymru’s Dewi Llwyd radio programme, he confirmed that the Government was considering a report by academic Simon Brooks on the problem of second homes.
He described it as a “complex problem”, with several different factors affecting each other – it would be necessary to look at the “complete picture” to find solutions, he said.
The problem is heightened by the pandemic as thousands of people move from the cities to live or buy holiday homes – one of the most controversial examples is a cottage in Uwchmynydd near Ynys Enlli, which is on sale at auction with a guide price of £500,000.
Yesterday nation.cymru reported how the housing crisis is spiralling out of control.
And today, the BBC has reported three charities saying that, for many working parents in Wales, buying their own home is an “unachievable dream.”
Nearly half the homeowners helped by the Help to Buy scheme in 2020-21 earned at least £40,000.
‘Lower incomes’
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said evidence suggested it was “not helping people on lower incomes”.
The Welsh Government said a new phase of the scheme will help those “who most need support”.
Help to Buy is a scheme which allows those eligible to buy a new-build property up to the value of £250,000 with help from the Welsh government by way of a shared equity loan.
Since January 2014, 11,959 properties have been purchased using a Help to Buy loan in Wales.
A recent official report on the scheme found that, over the last three years, the proportion of completed purchases by those on higher incomes had increased.
“During 2020-21, 49% of all homes purchased under the scheme were by those with an average household income of £40,000 to £60,000,” said the report.
Carmen Jackson, co-ordinator of Home-Start’s Helping Working Families project across Monmouthshire, Blaenau Gwent and Caerphilly, said: “Feelings are running high about the current housing situation. Many families feel that home ownership for their family is a completely unachievable dream.
“We have found in some regions, social housing stock is low, which creates demand for rentals, forcing up the prices of rentals which makes investors buying homes as buy-to-lets attractive and making home ownership unrealistic for all but the wealthiest.”
Dr Steffan Evans, policy and research officer at the Bevan Foundation, said: “The latest evidence adds further weight to these concerns. Investing the funds in other programmes such as the Social Housing Grant, which funds the construction of new social housing, could prove to be far more effective use of Welsh government funds.”
Rachel Casey, policy and partnerships officer at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: “Even before coronavirus, around 700,000 people in Wales were trapped in poverty. Together with low wages and inadequate benefit levels, high private rents lock people in Wales in poverty.
A Welsh government spokesperson said: “Our Help to Buy Wales scheme plays an important role in helping people get onto the property ladder with three-quarters of the 12,000 homes already delivered through the programme going to first-time buyers.
“Phase 3 of Help to Buy Wales was launched last month and has been designed to ensure the scheme further benefits those who most need support in securing home ownership.”
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Prifweinidog nesa? 🤔
That’s a separate problem, and the second part of the article outlines it. The housing crisis in the Bro Gymraeg self-evidently has higher priority for reasons that have been explained in previous articles and comments.
Social housing is crippled by Right to Buy law and it also serves the landlords. As fast as councils build social housing most becomes owned, and at lower prices. The big landlords are waiting to buy up from the new owners at higher prices so the owners like it. End result, Right to Buy builds properties for the landlords. It goes back to Thatcher.
Right to Buy was abolished in Cymru over two years ago: https://gov.wales/right-buy-end-wales-month The nub of the problem, which the Welsh Government fails to recognise is that the existence of a housing market together with the fetishisation of home ownership, or often two homes, is the real issue. A sane, rational system would abolish entirely the housing market ensuring that henceforth only development to satisfy local need would be permitted, whether that were social housing provision, or local people seeking to build a home for themselves having acquired land on which to do so having committed to giving the local community/authority… Read more »
Waiting for academics to report on “complex problems” within our communities is just pushing the problem further down the road. Local councils in Wales have been running housing needs surveys for decades but then struggle to match properties with individual needs as families grow up. The “this is where we have always lived” argument. The bigger point is why Jeremy Miles with his Education brief feels moved to plough in to the housing debate. Is he going to do something practical like save Ysgol Abersoch? I just see another politician lining himself up to compete for Mr Drakeford’s job when… Read more »
I personally don’t care whether the necessary legisation is taken on board by Jeremy Miles or by the woman who cleans Mark Drakeford’s office, as long as it gets done very soon.
Probably because he is Minister for the Welsh language and the skewed housing market in the West and north is ripping Welsh speaking communities to shreds and replacing them with (mostly) English people. Maybe one in ten of the incoming retirees/ wealthy ‘leisure-seekers will do a term of Welsh lessons then decide it’s too much bother and join the parallel and separate societies the influx from England’s West Midlands and North West have created for themselves especially in Ynys môn. That is why he needs to ‘plough in’. The language is his brief too, not just education, and it’s interesting… Read more »
The cabinet ministers who are favourites to succeed Mark Drakeford as First Minister – Wales Online