Every month is a struggle for mum of three Joanna. Despite working as a dinner lady at a local primary school, her paycheque is nowhere near enough to cover her rent and pay for food, bills, and all the other costs associated with supporting a family.
‘It’s a constant battle trying to make things work,’ Joanna tells Shelter. ‘When I go to the supermarket, the first place I’m looking is in the reduced section. This is normal to me. It’s … Read more
68,500 people. That’s huge.
If you’ve been following the World Athletics Championships, imagine every seat in the Olympic stadium taken up by someone who has a story to tell about how Shelter changed their lives in 2016/17.
That’s what we did, and do: we change lives, and now we can prove it.
We’re not satisfied with feeling it in our bones, we want hard facts and figures to prove our impact, and learn from them.
Our ImpactOur first ever … Read more
Shelter have long been campaigning for more houses. We need around 250,000 new homes per year to keep pace with the projected growth in households and even this doesn’t address the cumulative shortfall of past decades. Unfortunately, we are currently building around half of this. If this trend continues, prices will continue to grow at a fast pace putting a strain on families’ lives and budgets.
But the stage on from this is about how we get houses built. Earlier … Read more
I’m starting to hear a lot about the problem of housing for low to middle income households. Two events this week. One was the launch of housing association Gentoo’s Genie product, which removes the need for mortgages and deposits with a ‘home purchase plan. The second, today, was the Resolution Foundation think tank’s report on how low to middle income households are faring in the housing market.
Policy makers are trying to provide a politically appealing and genuinely affordable offer … Read more
We’ve had a warm reaction to our proposals for better renting over the last week. It’s a real testament to policy makers’ and the industry’s acknowledgement of the world we live in – one in which millions of people on ordinary incomes cannot get the stability from their home that they need to plan for the future.
There is now increasing agreement that something must be done – that the political, social and economic consequences of leaving so many people … Read more
As part of an ongoing effort to remove the regional government framework, Eric Pickles has announced that the Department for Communities and Local Government will no longer be publishing regional level statistics.
The arguments for and against this course of action are well-rehearsed and I do not intend to repeat them here (although you can read Shelter’s response to the consultation on this subject).
However this decision does raise a few issues.
The Department will include statistics for Local Enterprise … Read more
It’s not news to readers of this blog that we’re concerned about how private renting is working for people with no other options open to them.
Some 8.5 million people now rent from a private landlord – more than live in social housing. People on average incomes who would have been able to buy a home a decade ago will take a lot longer to realise that aspiration.
Over the last year we’ve looked at how renting is working – … Read more
I blogged recently about the need for ambitious ideas to tackle our housing shortage and the IPPR has duly obliged, today publishing a comprehensive analysis of British housing policy. Our excellent guest blogger – Matt Griffith – gives his take on the new report.
Matt Griffith is a campaigner for PricedOut.
Good news, housing is getting some serious attention. The, not so subtle, question being ‘how the hell do we get out of this mess?’
It’s a question that … Read more
Yesterday I went to the DWP to hear the first findings [PDF] from the project monitoring the impact of changes to the Local Housing Allowance – the housing benefit for private renters.
It was interesting but ultimately inconclusive. The researchers summarised very clearly ‘the results of the two surveys do not lend themselves to a concise or straightforward summary of the main effect so far’.
The report itself warns the results are an indication of ‘emerging trends and early signs … Read more