A report from the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) ‘Unravelling a crisis: the state of rural affordable housing in England’ highlights how affordable housing and homelessness is not just an urban problem under capitalism.
‘A chronic shortage of genuinely affordable housing is creating huge social housing waiting lists and forcing people out of the communities they know and love. This worrying crisis is being fed by record house prices, stagnating wages and an increasing number of second homes and short term lets.
The countryside, where levels of homelessness have leapt 40% in just five years, is being drained of skills, economic activity and vital public services.
There is an extreme disparity between rural house prices, which are higher than those in other parts of the country, and rural wages, which are much lower. House prices in the countryside increased at close to twice the rate of those in urban areas in the five years to 2022. While the average cost of a home jumped 29% and is now £419,000, rural earnings increased by just 19% to a total of £25,600.’
A
November 2023 CPRE report shows that a lack of affordable housing is
putting the survival of rural communities at risk, and provides
recommendations for solutions.
The chronic shortage of houses local people can afford to live in has resulted in levels of homelessness rising by 40% in just 5 years. More than 300,000 people are on the waiting list for social rented housing in rural England.
And because people are being forced to leave, the countryside is being drained of skills, economic activity, and vital public services.
Key problems include:
The high price of ‘affordable’ housing, due to planning policy defining ‘affordable’ as anything up to 80% of market value.
The lack of new building to replace social homes lost through the Right to Buy scheme.
The relatively low level of rural wages when compared to ever-increasing house prices.
The rapid rise in the number of second homes and homes available for holiday let.
‘Levels of homelessness have leapt 40% in the countryside in just five years. This crisis is being fed by record house prices, stagnating wages, huge housing waiting lists and a proliferation of second homes and short-term lets.
Shockingly, CPRE analysis has revealed that a greater proportion of people are sleeping rough in the seven worst affected rural local authorities – Bedford, Boston, North Devon, Cornwall, Boston, Bath and Northeast Somerset, Torridge and Great Yarmouth – than they are in London, Leeds or Norwich. People sleeping rough are defined as those sleeping in the open air, tents, makeshift shelters or buildings not meant for human habitation.
In September 2023, the latest month for which data is available, 48 people per 100,000 were sleeping rough in Boston, England’s worst-affected rural local authority. The figures for Bedford and North Devon, which have the next-highest rates of rough sleeping, were 38 and 29 respectively. This compares with 23 in London, 19 in Norwich and 14 in Leeds.
In England, 12 local authorities designated as largely or predominantly rural had levels of rough sleeping higher than the national average (15 people per 100,000). These were spread across the country, with examples in all regions except the North East, demonstrating the breadth of the problem.’
Houses are commodities. The problem is Capitalism, a system predicated upon exploitation and production for profit. The solution to these problems is Socialism where quality goods and services, including housing, will be produced for use not profit.
An article by Janet Surman in the Socialist Standard, June 2019, examines the Urban -Rural imbalance under capitalism.
‘Current global facts and figures on the urban-rural divide reveal disturbing numbers of people in both urban and rural locations living in desperate situations. The capitalist agenda is to profit from whatever scheme is dreamed up and implemented without regard for the externalities which, in this case, are people. There are plans being implemented around the world to remove millions of individuals from millions of acres of productive farmland, to empty the land of people in favour of huge agribusiness projects which can reap significant profits for corporations from mono-crops using vastly reduced labour numbers and, therefore, costs.’ Read more.
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/03/when-profit-is-all-2019.html
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