Christmas is a mere one week away, so what timely gift should you panic-buy the politics and economics enthusiasts (yes, they exist) in your life?
Fret no more: I’ve come up with the ideal present – a Build Your Own Housing Crisis kit.
In the box provided, you’ll find a city with rapidly growing research and medical industries; a large student population; a scarcity of unoccupied land to build on; a desperate homelessness problem; massive central government cuts to scupper planned housebuilding; and a green-belt encircling the city, strangling any hopes of expansion.
Once you’ve followed the instructions, you may be surprised to learn you’ve built your very own Oxford, rather than London.
The city is now the most unaffordable in the UK, with rents and house prices relative to earnings higher than even the overheating markets of the capital. The average house price in the city is 16 times the average wage, compared with London’s 15.7. Even in the cheaper parts of the city, ignoring the north where it’s common for houses to change hands for £1.2m, you’re still unable to nab a house for less than seven times the average salary.
That’s if you’re able to buy a house at all, or even rent. Earlier this week Oxford city council was rapped for placing homeless families in B&Bs for longer than the legal six weeks. In turn, on Thursday, in an internal council report (pdf), the city’s head of financial services wrote that “it is now almost impossible to find a property in the privately rented sector affordable at housing benefit levels, putting local families unable to access scarce social housing in a difficult position”.
Families made homeless by rent hikes have nowhere else to go: the only option is to pack up their life, job and friendships, take their children out of school and move elsewhere, or rely on scarce temporary accommodation and hope for the best.
The situation is hampered by government cuts, as well as planning issues. With the green belt limiting where the council and developers can build, land values rise and scarce space becomes even more desirable. Oxford needs up to a further 32,000 homes by 2031 to meet the housing need in the city. Instead, the council has “paused” developments while it tries to plug a multi-million pound shortfall in funds, caused in part because of the amount it expects to have to pay to compensate housing associations for the homes they sell under the extended right to buy. In November, David Edwards, director of housing and regeneration, told a conference that the council had a programme to build 1,000 homes. In fact, he said, it had “built 100-odd last year. That’s all been canned because we expect to have to pay that to government on right to buy.”
Oxford, like many local authorities has been hit, in its words, by “a triple whammy” on its housing revenue accounts: reduced social rents, the forced sale of high-value social housing, which will encompass a high proportion of Oxford’s stock; and the enforcement of the “pay to stay” policy, which forces councils to charge market rent for any households earning more than £30,000 (£20,000 less than the average dual-income household) – with those increased rents then handed straight over to central government, rather than being kept by the council. “Oxford has a desperate need for more council housing, not less, and it is likely the extra money handed to government will leave the city for good,” according to deputy council leader Ed Turner.
But perhaps the hardest hit will be the street homeless. Leslie Dewhurst, chief executive of Oxford Homeless Pathways, has warned that the city could see the return of “shanty towns”. Due to a proposed £1.5m cut to Oxfordshire county council’s homelessness grant, the city centre hostel could be forced to close all 200 beds. Approached by the BBC, a spokesperson said it was “not a legal requirement for the county council” to provide facilities.
It’s a grim Christmas tale, but it’s entirely preventable.
With enough foresight from government to admit there is a problem, many of these issues could have been seen off. Instead, they have been compounded. The political sensitivity of the green belt, defended to the death by traditional Tory voters in David Cameron’s and many other Conservatives’ constituencies, means until now the government hasn’t dared to propose building on it. Swingeing cuts to councils cannot, as the Conservatives believe, be made solely through “efficiency savings”: they mean scaling back social care, children’s centres and, in the midst of a housing crisis, anything that could stop people becoming homeless.
But Cameron appears incapable of understanding that. As his letter to Oxfordshire county council shows, he is completely ignorant of what his cuts are doing to his local area.
With deeper cuts to local authority budgets and no sign of Oxford’s house prices coming off the boil, Cameron can continue to visit the housing crisis he built near his own constituency whenever he fancies.
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