Sunday, September 09, 2018

A home in Wales? A Pipe dream for some

Owning your own home in Wales has become a "pipe dream" for many public sector workers, Unison claims.
Its report calculated that those in low-paid sectors would need mortgages worth six times their annual salaries. It would take a teaching assistant or a NHS cleaner almost two decades to save for a mortgage deposit.
"Owning a home is now little more than a pipe dream for most public sector workers," said Unison's assistant general secretary, Margaret Thomas. "Deposits and mortgages are quite simply way out of reach, while spiralling cost of renting is eating up a growing proportion of the take-home pay."
The union looked at five separate jobs and average salaries for NHS cleaners, teaching assistants, librarians, nurses and police community support officers. It estimated that if they saved £100 a month towards a home deposit - it would take on average 17 years to save enough to have the down-payment. In Monmouthshire, which is Wales' most expensive local authority for housing, it would take 24 years to amass the deposit.
Unison said a NHS cleaner earning £17,460 a year would have to borrow on average more than six times their salary for a first-time mortgage. A nurse on a salary of £23,000 would have to take a mortgage that was nearly five times their annual salary.
But it says as the Bank of England's maximum limit for lending is 4.5 times a salary - that would put a mortgage out of reach for a NHS cleaner in all local authorities in Wales - except Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent.
"The struggle for housing cuts across generations, jobs and regions," added Unison's assistant general secretary. "Employees are being forced to work further away for their jobs, and young people cannot afford to move out of the family home."

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