Spirit of Swindon: A roof over my head

By Tom Wilkes

“The housing market in this country is broken, and the cause is very simple: for too long, we haven’t built enough homes”. This is how the 2016 Government Housing White Paper addressed the issue of housing supply.

There have been many articles recently in the local and national press demonstrating how difficult it has become to afford somewhere to live. For those seeking to buy a house, the good news is that average prices are approximately £15,000 lower in Swindon than the South West as a whole. Despite this, almost 41% of first time buyers in the town are priced out of the market for a flat based on three times their income.

This is not surprising as nationally real house prices have jumped 151% since 1996 while real earnings have only risen a quarter as much. This is not the same in all parts of the developed world where examples can be found of house prices to earnings being in decline since the 1970s.

Of those unable to buy a house, simply meeting the criteria to afford to rent, including finding a guarantor, is a challenge.

Swindon has seen the number of available homes increase faster over the past three decades than almost any other town in the country. It also has a higher percentage of homes rented through social housing. Nevertheless, the rising population and increasing number of commuters living here and working elsewhere is putting Swindon under pressure so there continues to be a lack of affordable accommodation to buy or rent.

Commonweal, a pro-independence think tank in Scotland, said this: “Housing really is central to everything. We can’t understand our society, our economy, our geography, our psychology, what unites us, what divides us, family, debt, work, and wages, without understanding the role of the home in our lives.”

Housing is a huge issue for the UK and there are numerous statistics (some conflicting) that can be easily found online. Once again the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment for Swindon is a useful source of housing-based statistics: www.swindonjsna.co.uk/dna/housing-market-and-housing-need.

Books such as All That is Solid by Danny Dorling, movies like I Daniel Blake directed by Ken Loach and TV programmes such as No Place like Home shown last Spring on BBC can help everyone gain a wider understanding.

Housing and the central place it occupies in the life of every person and every community has been starkly revealed through the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The blogger Richard Murphy points out how in the 1970s, over 80 per cent of Government housing subsidies were focussed on supply, principally through building homes. Today 85 per cent of subsidies are focussed on demand with billions going to housing benefit payments or support for those taking out a mortgage for the first time.

Housing is a vital but complex area and we would very much like you to get involved in contributing to future articles on this issue. Spirit of Swindon would like to hear from people who have experienced particular difficulties in either claiming or sustaining a home in Swindon.

We would also like to hear from people who have (sensible) suggestions about how things might be improved in the country – and particularly in Swindon. Please respond using [email protected] and marking your mail Spirit of Swindon. Remember that the dates for publication mean that your contributions will not feature in the next edition but a future one.

Spirit of Swindon has emerged from a gathering of people who want to raise consciousness of the impact of economic inequality and help Swindon offer a lead to other towns and cities in the UK.