Britain has a serious housing problem. From the 1950s up until thelate 1970s, the state was seen as the main provider of housing –over 200,000 new social homes were builtevery year in the mid-1950s. For a long period after the SecondWorld War, the state provided an ever-increasing share of housingstock – at its high point in 1979, 42% of people in Britain livedin a social home, compared to just 8% in 2016.
It was widelyassumed across the political spectrum that the state would eventuallytake on almost all housing provision. This was in accordance with thewidespread view that housing was a basic human need, but alsorecognised that within living memory were the disastrous consequencesof the last time that housing had been left to the free market in thelate 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw industrial cities likeSheffield filled with slums.
But since the advent of neoliberalism in the late 1970s, housing has once again been largely left to the market, with disastrous consequences. Private enterprise has categorically failed to provide enough decent-quality homes that people can afford. At the same time, thanks to the Right to Buy policy, more social homes have been sold off or demolished than have actually been built almost every single year since 1981.
Shelter, the anti-homelessness campaign that have a major base inSheffield, want to reverse this trend. They’ve published a majornew manifesto ahead of the general election, which was partly writtenby the team in Sheffield. It contains four main demands:
- Build a newgeneration of social rented homes
- Make privaterenting affordable
- Raise thestandard of rented homes
- Improve housingrights and help to enforce them
Ahead of the vote on4 July, we’ve mapped out the scale of the housing crisis inSheffield through the lens of Shelter’s four demands, and usingdata provided by their local office.
Build a newgeneration of social rented homes
Sheffield has apopulationof around 556,500.
Thecity currently has around 245,000homes, and Shelter estimate we will need an additional 2,200homes per year over the next 15 years to match anexpected risein population.
But the council’scurrent plan is to buildor acquire just 202 new social homes per year over the next fiveyears. Shelter estimate we need to build around 900 affordable homesper year to compensate for a deficit in the private housebuildingsector.
We also have an eye-watering13,662 households inthe city onthe socialhome waiting list in2023 – a directand tragic consequence of the Thatcher’s government’s Right to Buy policy, aswell as the failure of successive governments since to build enoughnew social housing.
Justin the year 2021-22,Sheffield lost408social rented homesthrough Right to Buy and demolition.
This has led tohomelessness rocketing in the city – in December 2023, 672households in the city were livingin temporary accommodation, including 422 children.
But building thenumber of new homes we evidently need becomes an even knottierproblem when you take into account our city’s carbon budgets.
Research by Dark Matter Labs and the Laudes Foundation has found that to stay within our carbon budget – the amount of carbon we can use while sticking to a 1.5C global temperature rise – we can only build 176,000 brand-new homes a year across the whole of Europe.
That translates to 129 new homes in Sheffield a year – which falls well short of what is required.
The only way we can meet the city’s housing needs while notexceeding planetary boundaries – in other words, staying within‘the doughnut’– is a massively ambitious programme of retrofit: bringing the city’sunderused and unneeded factories and offices back into use ashigh-quality homes.
Not only would thishelp address the dire need for new housing without breaching theplanet’s life support systems, it could also create thousands ofnew highly-skilled jobs for young people in the city. Some haveeven suggested that Sheffield could be the UK’s first “Centrefor Retrofitting Excellence”.
At a national level,Shelter say that we need to build 90,000 genuinely affordable socialhomes a year over the next ten years to end the housing emergency forgood.
Make privaterenting affordable
With the stock ofsocial housing being steadily depleted every year, more and morepeople have been forced into the private rented sector, where rentshave skyrocketed.
Renters areroutinely pitted against each other as they compete for a limitedsupply of too often shoddy and overpriced homes. Just some of theincreasingly unreasonable demands from landlords include eye-wateringsums of rent up front, guarantors with excessive conditions and thecontinuation of unlawful ‘no benefits’ bans.
With a generalelection only weeks away, Shelter want all parties to make ironcladcommitments that if in power they will make renting safer, moresecure and affordable.
Privaterents in Yorkshire and Humber increasedby 7.3%on average inthe year up to April 2024– well above inflation.
Shelter are callingfor the government to bring forward long-delayed legislation to end no-fault evictions, which are routinely used by unscrupulouslandlords to evict people solely so they can then re-let the home tosomeone else who might pay more rent.
Alongside abolishingSection 21 no-fault evictions, Shelter are calling for politicalparties to make private renting more stable and affordable. Thismeans regulating in-tenancy rent increases – something that iscommonplace across Europe and would protect tenants from beingforced out of their homes by an unexpected rent hike.
Raise thestandard of rented homes
The quality of manyrented homes in the private sector is dire.
Sheltersay that 35% of all private rented homes in Sheffield were classed as‘non-decent’ as of 2021-22 – that equates to 15,000 homesacross the city.
In Sheffield, the council have made some attempts to address the dire quality of the city’s private rented sector, but due to government restrictions that are designed to benefit landlords, these schemes had to be targeted rather than city-wide.
Between 2018 and2023, private landlords around London Road, Abbeydale Road andChesterfield Road had to applyfor a license to let out property, with a need to prove that thehomes they were providing were safe and of sufficient quality.
This came after aseries of inspections which found that rented homes in the area wereeven worse than the region’s average, with acouncil report noting “serious issues of disrepair, dangerousliving conditions and poor management”.
Shelter are callingon the next government to invest in, and give stronger powers to,housing standards enforcement teams across the UK, allowing them totake action to improve the quality of private rented homes in theirarea.
They also want to see the government invest in renewing existingsocial homes, bringing up standards in the social rented sector aswell. Some campaigners, including tenants’ union ACORN, want to see“city-widelandlord licensing”, where all landlords in the private sectorwould need to prove that the homes they let out are fit for purpose.
Improve housingrights and help to enforce them
Private renters findthemselves at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to legislationand regulation in the UK.
This is notsurprising given the power of the landlord lobbying industry, and thefact that as of 2021 a quarter of Tory MPs werethemselves landlords. Earlier this year, theGuardian revealed that almost a third of Tory MPs who voted towater down a tenants’ protection bill were landlords.
The currentgovernment have long promised to end no-fault (orSection 21) evictions, but in April, before calling the election,announcedan indefinite delay on the plans, citing the need to reform thecourts first.
Section 21 evictions are a key driver of homelessness in the UK. Researchby Shelter found that 84,460 private renters had claimedhomelessness support after being given a Section 21 notice since theTories promised to outlaw the practice in 2019.
In their manifesto,Shelter want the government to establish a legal right to to suitableemergency accommodation and adequate support for anyone at risk ofstreet homelessness. They also want to restore legal aid for helpwith housing problems, such as dangerous states of disrepair, andinvest in proper support services to prevent homelessness.
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