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Everyone needs a warm, secure and affordable home, yet millions of people don’t have this most basic building-block for a happy and successful life. Over a million households are on council waiting lists and more than 130,000 children are growing up in temporary accommodation.
This housing crisis is one of the top issues facing this country, and it is not caused by immigrants.
Being able to buy a home is out of reach for far too many people. While earnings have doubled since 1997, house prices have increased four-and-a-half times, ensuring that only those first-time buyers on high wages, or with family help, can save a sufficient deposit and get on the “housing ladder”.
In addition, house-building policies have failed to keep up with demand, with the current government identifying a shortfall of 1.5 million homes. We also have more people are owning second and holiday homes thus depleting the availability of current housing, the use of housing and land as an investment, including the selling off of social housing, and along with many industries, Brexit has caused significant disruption in the construction sector, with the loss of EU Free Movement being of particular concern.
Meanwhile, the rental market offers too much poor housing and exploitative leasing agreements. In 2023 in Greater London, the average tenant spent 35% of their salary on rent; in Greater Manchester, rent has gone up twice as quickly as wages have in the last decade. These high rents do not mean that tenants have good living conditions, for example 51% of tenants in London are reporting black mould issues in their flats.
The Green Party supports rent control, new stable rental tenancy agreenments, an end to no-fault evictions, and private residential tenancy boards to help fix the terrible state of housing in this country.
While of course any increase in population must be met with an equivalent housing increase, the impact of immigration on housing is frequently over-emphasised for political reasons. As with all examples of when scapegoats are used to mask policy failings, the Green Party will stand up for the blameless and instead focus on the actual root causes of the issue.
Immigrants often make less demand on housing than do citizens. Immigrants from all countries are more likely to house share – and to house share for longer – than are British citizens. As of 2019, the average time an immigrant from a richer country spends in house-sharing is five years, while the average time for someone from a poorer country is ten years. As the economy has worsened since this data point was produced, that timeline is likely to be even longer now.
Further, people born abroad are consistently less likely to own their home than are those born in the UK, no matter how long they have lived here.
Additionally, consistently the largest number of issued visas go to students, who are 60% more likely to live in student housing than are British students. The majority of international students also leave the country after their studies, which means many never enter into the broader housing market. For those who do stay in the UK, they often only remain for a couple of years to enjoy their post-graduate life, which means that even if they do enter the housing market it is only for a short time. In other words, the largest group of visa-holders are the least likely group to enter into the wider UK housing market.
Regarding the conditions of the housing stock which does exist, immigrants are also more likely to live in poor-quality housing and an estimated 11% of households headed by non-EU born adults lived in overcrowded accommodation.
Studies have found that their main competition for these tenancies are other immigrants rather than citizens, specifically because of the poor quality of the housing. We need to ensure that nobody lives in unhealthy or even dangerous conditions, not condemn immigrants to them.
Further, approximately 20% of all home-builders are foreign nationals – in other words, we need immigration to ensure that homes are built at all.
It is the responsibility of a government to ensure that a given population has the infrastructure it requires, and to be honest with the public as to the causes and solutions to any issue. Instead of scapegoating those who are not at fault for the housing crisis in the UK, the Green Party would ensure that new homes are built and that more regulations are brought in to ensure that rental agreements are in the best interest of the tenant.
Here we have compiled a list of articles and background papers on a range of topics that have helped us inform our policy making and that you may find useful to read and share.
