We need a long-term approach to housing, which could contribute to solving three key issues, say the Future Generations, Welsh Language and Children’s Commissioner…
Access to adequate housing relates to the most basic human needs, and it impacts the lives of millions of Welsh citizens daily. Housing also plays a crucial role in solving some of our biggest challenges.
Through working together regularly on policy areas that crosscut our individual remits, we know housing is an overwhelming issue and that Wales needs more joined-up thinking and a longer-term view to achieve effective housing policy for our citizens. There are three key challenges we must tackle as a nation:
- tackling poverty and inequality
- achieving our net zero targets
- responding to the negative impacts of demographic changes facing our communities, such as an aging population.
Securing the right to safe and affordable housing in every part of Wales is essential to our collective social, environmental, economic and cultural well-being.
Our citizens should have access to affordable accommodation that exceeds their basic needs and supports them to contribute socially and economically to their communities. There is much evidence to suggest that for many people in Wales, this is not currently the case, for example as documented in the Bevan Foundation’s 2023 report:
Wales’ Housing Crisis: Local Housing Allowance and the private rental market in Wales, Winter 2023
The Bevan Foundation assesses that Wales is ‘facing a housing crisis’ and we believe the consequences of this crisis are a threat to achieving well-being for both current and future generations, ensuring the rights of children in Wales are met, and achieving Wales’ aspirations for a million Welsh speakers by 2050. The lack of access to adequate and affordable housing is deepening poverty and inequality in Wales, particularly for children and young people, with a third of children currently living in poverty.
In 2022 the Children’s Commissioner’s engaged with more than 8,000 young people in the Ambitions for Wales survey (2022). Housing was within the top four concerns for all children. Around a quarter of young people aged 12-18 years worried about having somewhere to live and having enough to eat. Two thirds of parents and carers always worried about their children having somewhere to live. But children and young people’s voices haven’t always been heard enough in discussions about housing and homelessness.
Housing is a key social determinant of health. In 2019, Public Health Wales research found poor housing accounts for £95m of costs to the NHS annually in Wales. We cannot achieve the goals of a more equal Wales and a healthier Wales, without addressing the effects of the housing crisis and the unequal way in which its effects are felt depending on factors such as income, disability, age and gender. Affordable housing is also key to ensuring cohesive, multi-generational communities where people can afford to choose to live near their support networks.
Many of the communities in Wales experiencing the highest upward pressure on house prices are also those where there is a high density of Welsh speakers. The Welsh Government’s Welsh language strategy, Cymraeg 2050, highlights that the areas where there is a high density of Welsh speakers have pockets of rural poverty and deprivation, and average wages which are among the lowest in the UK. It is essential for the vitality of the Welsh language that it continues to thrive in these areas.
Many of the impacts of the housing crisis are amplified by demographic changes in Wales, including aging populations, increases in single occupancy households and the pattern of commuter shifts to rural locations that has been experienced during and since the Covid19 pandemic.
We need a long-term approach to housing, one that centres well-being economy principles that place value on houses as homes, rather than as financial assets. Recent changes, such as permitted increases to council tax on second homes, are a welcomed interventions but we must explore how to go much further in ensuring an affordable and adequate home for all.
The homes we live in are a key part of the jigsaw of achieving our net zero ambitions in Wales too. We welcome the continued investment by Welsh Government in their Optimised Retrofit Program (ORP), focused on social housing in Wales, which has the potential to lift some of our poorest households out of poverty as well as reducing carbon emissions. But we must do more to support those households in private rented accommodation who currently receive no benefit from the ORP. Everyone should be able to live in dry and fuel-efficient homes without fear of unaffordable rent increases.
We will need to go much further and much faster to reach our targets. For example, we should be increasing opportunities for area-based approaches to decarbonise housing at scale. This should happen through retrofit efforts, as well as through cheaper renewable energy where benefits are kept in Welsh communities.
There are opportunities for re-skilling that we must seize, especially in our rural and Welsh speaking communities. We must ensure that the retrofit challenge, as well as the opportunities around sustainable new-build homes, are bringing economic benefit to those places in Wales that need it most.
We support the Back the Bill campaign seeking to ensure everyone in Wales has a right to a good home, and look forward to the upcoming White Paper from Welsh Government on the Right to Adequate Housing, as well as to the outcomes from the Commission for Welsh Speaking Communities expected soon. These are both key interventions in tackling the housing crisis and must form part of an integrated approach.
We will continue to work together, challenging each other to ensure our policy work is joined up. We need that joined up action across Wales to avoid the housing crisis deepening. We want Welsh Government to co-create a vision for housing in Wales with communities across Wales. The co-creation should have a focus on reducing poverty and inequality, achieving our net zero targets, and enabling communities to reverse the negative impacts of demographic changes. This vision could then act as a long-term action plan for future decision-making and be a step towards ensuring Wales is a country where everyone who needs one, can find a home.