Leader: Forced to downsize our housing dreams
Wednesday 7th December 2011, 12:30PM GMT.
In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher let loose the aspirations of ordinary British people to own their own home.
Council tenants who had once been content to rent seized their opportunity to get on the housing ladder. Up and down the country houses were built to meet demand. There was a boom.
Today it is as if the clock has been turned back to the days before those days, although there is a difference. People who now have to rent through economic circumstance know what they are missing and yet they can see no way out.
Figures from the National Housing Federation confirm that for many Salopians their predicament is hopeless. The average Shropshire home apparently costs £208,309. The average individual income is £20,374. Even the cheapest Shropshire homes, according to the NHF, come in at £130,000.
While the NHF’s lowest price is too pessimistic – there are currently flats advertised in Woodside, Telford, for under £70,000 – the magnitude of the financial task for aspiring home owners is obvious.
Gross annual income to secure a mortgage in Shropshire is £44,638. There will be many people who read that figure and think how nice it would be to come anywhere near it.
There is an unbridgeable gap. With the economy in dire straits, rising pay levels will not narrow it. So it has to be narrowed by building more homes, and more affordable homes.
Those who had once hoped to have a three-bedroomed detached house will have to learn to lower their expectations. Maybe, with luck, they will just about be able to afford a one-bedroomed terrace.
The country is facing a cultural change. It is going to be one that many whose dreams are being crushed will find difficult to accept.
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About this ‘seized their opportunity…’
I remember this – the government not only gave us this ‘freedom’ but backed it up by cutting money that councils got for the grants, forcing the council to put up rents and also stopped the councils using the money on building new council houses and cutting off access to reasonable housing for those following along (banking a problem for the future .. eg now).
When rents went way above morgage the sheer logic of buying was too much to avoid.
Much of the media and all those who gloss over in-depth considerations headlined how good it was – but the longer term quiet bomb was ticking and finally exploded at the next downturn, and next and next. Council home tenancy helps smooth over during economic downturns, it’s not a facility we have now – like unions to blame, mass industries to blame/milk or a mass workforce to sack to, yes blame.
How did Snatcher equate worker flexibility with buying your home? I never got that. If your job goes elsewhere but you are just a few years into a 20 year morgage – what for you then, tough. So she should have loved renting except she hated local (councils) control because people inconveniently voted in the other side.
Quick fixes really, don’t, never have. People, ordinary people have to live with the consequences of petty politicing.
I realise plenty of folk felt life improved quickly due to this – but communities save the country lots of money by generating good will for helping each other – societies based on individual greed, do not.
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Unbridgeable gap?
Unrealistic to plan to start by buying a 3 bed house, surely?
Normal people buy a flat or a small terrace, and move slowly up the housing ladder
Many take in lodgers to cover the costs
Immigrants with no money club together as an extended family to buy a property on the poor side of town and live in a crowded house until they can afford a second one
Some people to choose to smoke and drink for ten years, and then find they have no savings – others work hard, take second jobs, and save for a deposit for a few years while living with family, or taking a job with accommodation provided
It can be done, it just isn’t as easy as being given a house, or as much fun as going out on Friday and Saturday nights
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