Housing: does renting make us rootless?

Battle of Ideas festival 2024, Sunday 20 October, Church House, London

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

Fewer people now own their own homes; more people now live in less secure, privately rented housing. The average age of first-time buyers has risen to 33 years old – its highest-ever point. Politicians and commentators have often disagreed about whether the roof over our heads should be one that we own. The ‘home-owning democracy’ still matters to some, but millions are just desperate to find a secure place to call home. No wonder the UK’s housing crisis is a top priority for the new Labour government. Sir Keir Starmer has promised to build 1.5million new homes and to help more people become home-owners under his promise to ‘get Britain building.’

While it is widely accepted that more homes are needed, the reality is that building them takes time, lags behind population changes like migration and does not always result in more affordable places to live. Reducing housing to a technical set of building targets can miss broader questions, particularly around the social costs of the housing crisis.

Viral campaigners like Kwajo Tweneboa have highlighted how housing impacts people’s quality of life. Writers like Nick Gallent, a professor at UCL, have argued that housing’s social purpose has been relegated behind its economic function as an asset. Undoubtedly, ‘place’ is an essential part of belonging and social connection. The Belonging Forum and Opinium polled 10,000 people last year, and renters were more likely than the general population to feel lonely (40 per cent vs 29 per cent).

How can short-term renters become more settled and feel they belong within communities? In turn, not knowing if they will ever be able to afford to buy can create a sense of insecurity; dependent on landlords, victims of huge rent increases and insecure tenancies, the young especially can feel rootless rather than fancy-free. Houses become transactional places to stay rather than homes. Many retreat back to their family homes rather than forging their own way; couples defer having families; and why bother trying to belong to a neighbourhood if you might end up being forced to move house?

One message of the previous government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda was the idea that you don’t need to leave an area to get on. Now that levelling up has been abandoned as an idea by Labour, what is the message to the next generation when it comes to finding homes and economic opportunity? How can people settle down and forge relationships in communities in the midst of such flux? Or is there a danger of romanticising permanence at the expense of a more dynamic and optimistic view of changes in one’s housing status? What is the connection between housing and cohesive community that the government needs to keep front of mind as it builds new housing?

SPEAKERS
Alex Cameron
editorial designer; design and cultural critic

Liam Halligan
columnist, Sunday Telegraph; author, Home Truths: the UK’s chronic housing shortage

Sheila Lewis
retired consultant; housing association chair

James Yucel
head of external affairs, PricedOut

CHAIR
Joel Cohen
associate fellow, Academy of Ideas