Affordable Housing: Young People

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to increase the amount of affordable housing for young people.

My Lords, the Government have committed to delivering the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation, and young people will benefit from this. The £39 billion social and affordable homes programme aims to deliver around 300,000 new social and affordable homes, including at least 60% for social rent. For young people renting, the Renters’ Rights Act has capped rent in advance and ended unfair bidding wars and no-fault evictions. I am also working with the sector to simplify the buying and selling process and make that more accessible.

I thank the Minister for her positive response, but—and it is a big but—how does the £39 billion pot actually help if, on the one hand, as charities tell us, her departmental bidding processes and rules exclude, in effect, the smaller youth charities from actually applying for grants and building vital transitional and move-on accommodation for young people, but, on the other hand, the Government’s own planning guidance lacks the strength and clarity to allow planners to give permission for what is becoming known as the stepping-stone accommodation model, to enable the building of such accommodation? Please could the Minister look into both these obstacles, currently mentioned by the charities, to ensure that these smaller providers can actually deliver the affordable homes that young people need and can afford?

I recognise the noble Baroness’s concerns, and I welcomed the opportunity to speak to her on this matter during the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Act; I subsequently went to visit one of the schemes she had mentioned to me. The nationally described space standard sets minimum standards for internal floor space of new dwellings and is suitable for application across all tenures, but that standard is not mandatory, and it is at the discretion of local planning authorities to adopt it locally by reference to the standard in their local plan policies. As part of our consultation on updates to the National Planning Policy Framework, we have sought views on whether changes are needed to make sure that affordable fixed-term accommodation, such as stepping-stone accommodation, is better supported, with particular reference to space standards. We are in the process of analysing the responses to that and we will be confirming our response in due course.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is taking part remotely; I invite the noble Lord to speak.

My Lords, with land plots for housing often exceeding the cost of home construction, does that factor alone not act as a real disincentive to the development of housing for sale at realistic, affordable prices? Why do we not establish a study into the relationship between land pricing and housing development costs? The study could consider proposals for building on land acquired at agricultural prices and sold under new forms of housing registration and land title arrangements, but which, at the same time, with other measures, could protect investment in existing freehold.

I thank my noble friend. We continually look at issues around the viability of building and are working very closely, with both the development sector and our local authorities, to make sure that land pricing and other issues around viability are taken into account. The £39 billion we have put into social and affordable housing will make sure that we can give some support to those who are trying desperately to get some social housing built in the country; we continue to work with them on that. The bold planning reforms we have introduced will also assist with that process.

My Lords, young people are paying more in rent than they are on a mortgage, and so they would not need to join the queue for affordable housing if they had some help with a deposit. I put again to the Minister the question I posed to her in April, when she conceded that there was more work to be done. What progress has she been able to make in discussions with the developers, the financial institutions and the Treasury to bring forward a successor to the Help to Buy scheme, on which the then Government made a profit of £1.4 billion last time?

A detailed analysis has been done of the Help to Buy scheme, and we will learn lessons from it. We will not reintroduce it as it was, but I agree with the noble Lord that, for many young people renting property, their rent is higher than a mortgage payment would be. Since I gave him my previous answer, I have been working with the sector. A wide variety of mortgage products are available in the UK, including a range of products available at a high loan-to-value ratio, such as 95% and even 100%. I met the Building Societies Association last week, and it is very keen to offer more innovative products that can help first-time buyers, including some that take account of a track record of paying rent, as they deal with a mortgage application. These are innovative systems. We know that many first-time buyers are not aware of the mortgage products that may help them, so we are working on a communications campaign. The Building Societies Association is doing its own, and the Government will also do something to make people aware of the steps they can take to get on to the housing ladder.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is now a brilliant new way of helping young people get the accommodation they need: intergenerational housing? Pioneered by the Phoenix Community Housing association in Lewisham, in schemes involving apartments for older people, a proportion are allocated to young people, who, in return for an affordable rent, provide social amenities, services and help with IT for the older people in the same scheme. Will she encourage Homes England to do more of these fantastic schemes that help both young and old together?

I agree with the noble Lord that such intergenerational schemes work exceptionally well, and I thank him for sharing the information on the initiative in Lewisham. The Government have committed to delivering this biggest boost to social and affordable housing, to make sure that everyone, including younger people, have access to safe, decent and affordable homes. To achieve that ambition, we will rely on both housing associations and councils across the country delivering the kind of ambition and innovation that the noble Lord discussed. I look forward to hearing about more schemes such as Phoenix Community Housing; it is great to have generations working together on their housing.

My Lords, young people under 35 who require support for their housing get only the shared accommodation rate of benefits, yet they are often disproportionately the people who have mental health concerns or other issues. Does the Minister agree that this needs looking into to ensure that the most vulnerable young people are not the ones who are pushed to the bottom of the housing situation?

The allocation of funding for the DWP is a bit out of my housing remit, but I know that my noble friend who just answered the first Oral Question will have that in the forefront of her mind. As we deal with the situation around vulnerable young people, adequate housing is an absolutely fundamental building block of making sure that we set young people off on the right road from the very start. We will be working with colleagues in the DWP to make sure that we tackle the issues that prove to be barriers to young people entering housing.

My Lords, where proceeds of right to buy are used to build a new social home, the council housing waiting list reduces and a family has the opportunity to have their own affordable social home. Does the Minister agree that the Government should support and encourage strategies that provide more homes and reduce council housing waiting lists?

It was right-to-buy policies over the last 14 years which diminished the stock of social housing. So, while I agree with the noble Lord, I do not think that the right solution was brought forward. The Social Housing Bill that is currently before the House will change the right-to-buy scheme so that we enable more of the funding for right to buy to go back into the properties. We have now allocated 100%, so that local authorities can have 100% of the funding, and we will reform the whole right-to-buy scheme to deliver a fairer, better-value and more sustainable scheme. We want a scheme that will help long-standing tenants to buy their own homes, but we also need to protect much-need social housing stock and ensure that more homes are built than lost. That is what we are doing with the Bill. We will make sure that when a local authority builds a new house, it is exempted from right to buy for 35 years, so that councils have the confidence to invest for the future.