Dwelling on it: Housing crises in the English speaking world

KEY POINTS

• People in English-speaking countries, or the ‘anglosphere’, tend to want a home of their own. But in recent years talk of a ‘housing crisis’ has made the issue of housing increasingly politically salient.
• This briefing looks at four dimensions of the housing crisis: homeownership, private renting, social housing and homelessness.
• Homeownership rates in Britain have fallen in recent years, as rising house prices and tougher credit conditions since the global financial crisis have made it harder to get on the property ladder.
  • Average house prices in the UK are now nine times average earnings, up from 4 in 1992; New Zealand has it even worse, with a ratio of 10.5.
• The role of supply in making housing less affordable has been disputed, as housing supply has outpaced population and household growth in the UK. Politicians should be cautious about the impact supply can have on house prices.
• Renters across the anglosphere have experienced rising costs, shrinking property sizes, increasing overcrowding and higher instability than other tenures. Yet most renters are more dissatisfied with renting itself than with their properties.
• Though the UK has one of the biggest social housing stocks in the world, it has shrunk considerably since the Thatcher government introduced the ‘right to buy’ policy. This has resulted in proportionately longer social housing waiting lists than elsewhere in the anglosphere.
• Though the data on homelessness is difficult to compare across countries, it appears to be higher in the English-speaking world than elsewhere.
• While the UK’s housing problems – in particular the social housing waiting list, level of homelessness and housing costs – are bad, they are in line with other anglosphere countries like Canada and Australia, and likely less bad than New Zealand’s. The UK has much to learn from housing policy successes and failures across the anglosphere.