That this House has considered the housing needs of young people.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. Everyone has the right to a safe, secure and healthy home, yet for far too many young people across the United Kingdom, that feels increasingly out of reach. The effects go far beyond housing: it is about young people’s ability to leave home, to work and contribute, to start a family, and to build a stake in the country they call home.
I am sure every hon. Member here can see the shift happening in their constituencies. We see children staying at home for longer and struggling to save to move out. In 2024, the Office for National Statistics showed that a third of men aged 20 to 34 were living with their parents, along with just over a fifth of women of the same age. That is not a lifestyle choice; it is the result of a housing market that has moved beyond what young people can afford.
Nowhere is the pressure clearer than in the private rented sector. Private renters in the bottom 20% of earners spend an average of 63% of their income on rent, and private renters overall spend 34% of their income on housing. That means that the average renter pays rent that, by the Government’s own definition, is not affordable. Someone renting from the age of 18 will have paid almost £200,000 in rent before reaching the average age of a first-time buyer in Britain—34. A young couple will have paid more in rent than the cost of an average home in the UK plus an extra £110,000 on top.
That is not a fair system. It simply strips wealth from younger people and takes away our children’s future. Given the enormous sums of money that young people pay in rent before they have an opportunity to get on the property ladder, will the Minister meet the Liberal Democrats to discuss a rent-to-buy scheme?
We also see the strain in the rise of what we call concealed households. In 2020, there were nearly 2 million households that included an additional adult who wanted to rent or buy but could not afford to do so. More than half the people in those households were aged 16 to 24. I am sure we all understand that this stems from years of failure; it is not a problem that has happened overnight. We now have adults living in childhood bedrooms—not because they want to, but because there is nowhere affordable for them to go.
For many young people, home ownership feels less realistic and more like a distant aspiration. High prices, high deposit requirements and the pressure of everyday living costs have pushed ownership further and further out of reach. Nowhere is that clearer than in the average age of first-time buyers. In the 1970s, it was as low as 24; now, as of this year, it has been pushed up to 34. It is no wonder that young people feel like the system is not working. ONS data shows that in 2024, the median house-price-to-income ratio was 7.9 in England, 5.4 in Wales, 5.3 in Scotland and 4.6 in Northern Ireland.
In December 2023, the Scottish SNP Government slashed their affordable housing budget by £200 million—a 26% reduction. We have record levels of children in temporary accommodation in Scotland—10,000—and under the SNP’s watch, rough sleeping has increased by 66%. Scottish Labour is promising 125,000 new homes to add to the UK Government’s ambitious targets. Does the hon. Member agree that that would surely tackle the housing needs of our young people?
I absolutely agree, and I would add that the Scottish Liberal Democrats are also contributing to the push for additional affordable housing in Scotland.
The ONS also found that a median-priced home was affordable to the highest-income 40% of households in Scotland and Wales, while in England it was affordable only to the top 10%. That means that even in the most affordable nation, the average house price is now more than banks are willing to lend to someone on an average salary. Can the Minister tell us what discussions the Government have had with the Financial Conduct Authority about its ongoing mortgage rule review and whether it will publish an assessment of how any changes would affect the under-35s? Any changes must not make the situation worse.
Lack of access to affordable homes causes the decline of communities and the widening of wealth gaps. If people can rely on family wealth, or perhaps family sacrifice, to access the property market, they have an enormous headstart on their peers. With that in mind, can the Minister explain what assessment has been made of whether the Government’s first-time buyer support schemes, such as help to buy ISAs, are genuinely reaching young people on ordinary incomes, rather than those who already have family who can help them out?
The consequences of this issue, as we have heard, go beyond housing. When young people cannot afford to live near work, talent leaves and our best and brightest look for opportunities overseas. When high rents dominate young people’s finances, local businesses suffer and third spaces die out. The economic impact of the financial stranglehold that housing has on our youth hurts us all. The Minister must recognise that housing and security are now affecting not only where young people live but whether they feel able to start a family.
I want to make something clear for those who misrepresent the struggles of young people trying to get on the property ladder: young people are not asking for handouts or special favours, and the reason that they cannot buy a home is not their lifestyle. They are asking for a fair chance—the chance to build a life of their own. It is a chance that previous generations have had. This Government have an enormous majority and, if used properly, the opportunity to give young people real hope. I urge the Government to listen to and work with young people to give them the future that they deserve.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) for bringing forward this debate. I will focus on the housing needs of care leavers and those with care experience.
Every year around 12,000 young people leave foster care or residential homes and begin their transition into independent living. For most young people, that stage of life can be supported by family, friends and a social network—they have a safety net—but so often for care leavers that safety net does not exist. As a result, they face a sharply heightened risk of homelessness: in 2024-25 alone, 4,610 care leavers aged between 18 and 20 experienced homelessness. That represents a 54% increase over five years, with rates rising 2.5 times faster than among the general population.
Those numbers represent young people who are being pushed into crisis at the very point that they should be building their future. The Government have recognised that challenge, and they are introducing important changes through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. That includes additional support for care leavers at risk of homelessness, a raft of changes in the Department of Health and Social Care around prescriptions, and wholesale reform of children’s social care. The Bill is a hugely positive and welcome step, but I hope that we can go further.
There remain significant barriers that prevent care leavers from accessing accessible and suitable accommodation. The private sector, which many young people rely on, is particularly difficult for them to navigate. Research from Centrepoint has found that care leavers are significantly more likely to be rejected by landlords, who are unwilling to rent to that particular group. At the same time, 40% reported they could not afford deposits and up-front costs.
Practical solutions do already exist, but they are not mandatory and they are not used widely enough. Local authority rent deposit and guarantor schemes make a real difference, yet fewer than half of councils currently offer them. Expanding such schemes could be a straightforward and effective way to open doors for care leavers who would otherwise be locked out of the housing market.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) for her contribution, and for her passion for helping the young people in her constituency and across the entire UK.
I do not know what everybody else does, but after a busy week at Westminster my heart longs for home. It longs to get home to enjoy my precious grandchildren, my dear wife and my bed, which, no matter what, fits me better than most. Home is a wonderful thing, and I put on record my thanks to my wife Sandra for giving me a home for 39 years.
However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for young people to find a home. For thousands of young people across Northern Ireland that foundation is crumbling. Members will not be aware of the 38,336 households across the Province currently in housing stress. That is not just a number; it is a record high that represents a 6% increase in just one year.
It is good to see the Minister in his place; he is, by his very nature, incredibly helpful. He always tries to be helpful in any debate and with any questions that I have. I am quite sure that the answers to our requests will be positive and constructive.
To give a Northern Ireland perspective, which the Minister will be glad to know he is not responsible for, in my own council area of Ards and North Down—a borough that is rightly celebrated for its beauty—there hides a growing struggle similar to that which the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire referred to and others will refer to as well. As of March 2024, there were some 3,300 applicants on our local social housing waiting list. Even more alarmingly, 81% of those applicants—more than 2,400—are officially in housing stress. They are living in conditions that are overcrowded, unsuitable and simply unsafe.
The crisis is stealing the childhoods of our youngest citizens. Across Northern Ireland, some 5,000 children are now living in temporary accommodation. That is a staggering 99% increase just five years, which gives everyone an idea of the problem in Northern Ireland. These children are not just waiting; they are spending an average of 38 weeks—nearly three quarters of a year—stuck in hostels or B&Bs. In Ards and North Down, we have the fifth highest social housing waiting list in the whole country.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Ms Butler. When I first stood for election to this place, I did so with a mission to fix Oxfordshire’s broken housing market. I saw the mess that we were in. I saw the lives broken by that market long before I arrived here.
Oxford faces a crisis of unique and crushing proportions. Homes now cost 12 times local earnings—a burden for the city, a burden for the county and a burden that no other part of this country is asked to bear.
For our young people, the situation is transformative in the worst of ways. Those aged 25 to 34 are now the backbone of a private rented sector that has doubled in size since the start of the century. These young people are renters by necessity, renters without equity and renters without a clear path to a home of their own.
In Oxford, nearly a third of households rent privately. As the city’s prices climb, the pressure climbs; as the pressure climbs, people leave. They leave and go to places such as Banbury. They come for the 20-minute commute, but they bring with them the weight of Oxford’s exhaustion. Thus Oxford’s housing problems become Banbury’s housing problems. Demand has surged. Supply has stalled. My inbox swells as the local housing waiting list ticks up and up, quadrupling in a single decade.
This is what I say to the local voices who question why Cherwell district council, which covers Banbury, must contribute to Oxford’s unmet housing need: “It is no longer Oxford’s need. It is our need in Banbury as well. It is our future. It is our children who are being priced out of their own parishes.”
Let us be clear: this is not merely a housing crisis. It is an economic crisis. Oxford does not just grow; it prospers. It does not just work; it innovates. Our high-tech industries generate £23.5 billion in gross value added annually. We are a net contributor to the Exchequer, a global destination for talent and a titan of enterprise. That is why the Chancellor is right to champion the Oxford-Cambridge corridor—it is a vision of growth, infrastructure and national renewal—but that vision will remain a mirage if the workers required to build it cannot afford to live within it.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairing of this debate, Ms Butler. I have the honour to represent an inner London constituency, in which approximately a third of the population live in private rented accommodation. Among young people, that proportion is considerably higher because of the problems they have with access to social housing of any sort, which force them into the private rented sector or into sharing properties.
The stress they suffer is enormous, the overcrowding that happens in shared flats is horrendous and the way young people have to club together to try to pay rent, which for even a two or three-bedroom flat would be at least £2,000 a month in the private rented sector in my constituency, means they have no possibility of saving money for anything else. Their whole life revolves around work, trying to pay the rent and the other costs that go with it.
Their ability to access council or housing association accommodation is extremely limited, because there is an enormous waiting list with a terrible stress level and shortage of housing. Essentially, to be allocated council housing, a person must have quite profound special needs. I see the Minister nodding; he understands very well that this is an issue all across London. Communities are increasingly broken up because of the lack of access to anything that one could begin to call affordable housing.
There are a number of things that we could do about that. First, we could increase the levels of control over the private rented sector, something I have raised before with the Minister. I support the Renters’ Rights Act 2025—it is a big step forward, because it gives more security and power to the tenant vis-à-vis the landlord. However—and this is the big problem, particularly for London, the south-east and every other big city—the lack of rent control means that places become increasingly unaffordable, forcing young people out of these areas altogether. I hope, as a result of this debate, that the Government can give us some hope that they will be able to do something about young people’s housing, particularly in inner-urban areas.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I am grateful to the hon. Members for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) and for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) for securing the debate.
Housing is an issue that goes to the heart of opportunity for young people. A generation that came of age in the wake of the financial crisis and saw youth services slashed under austerity then had their lives put on pause by the pandemic; now, when they seek to be independent, they face a housing market that is too often still inaccessible.
Young people in the private rented sector spend a higher proportion of their income on rent than any other age group—if they are able to live independently at all, that is. In 2014, 36% of those aged 24 still lived in their family home; by 2024, that had risen to 49%. Thankfully, this Government are treating the issue with the seriousness it deserves. The £39 billion investment in social and affordable housing is the most ambitious in a generation, and planning reforms will unlock growth. Together with the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, which was passed by this Labour Government and comes into force next month, it represents not just policy change, but a long-term commitment to rebuilding a housing system that works.
Young people, particularly 25 to 34-year olds, are disproportionately more likely to rent, as is already clear from the debate, so they are highly vulnerable to high housing costs. Regulating rental increases will significantly benefit young people, providing greater housing stability and increasing financial predictability. I often talk about ensuring that, when we build homes, the infrastructure that communities need is in place, and I would like to talk about partnerships in delivery.
In Derby, we have seen at first hand the role that organisations such as the YMCA play in supporting young people into safe, stable housing. The Foundry Point development, opening in the next couple of weeks, is one such example. Once fully developed, it will support young people aged 18 to 30 with 60 affordable, self-contained flats on land that forms part of the Rolls-Royce estate. It is about not just providing a roof, but enabling independence, employment and long-term stability, and it is possible because of the partnership between the YMCA, Homes England, Rolls-Royce, community groups and individuals donating and fundraising to help keep rents affordable. The Minister would be very welcome to come and visit.
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In Doncaster, we have fantastic organisations such as Doncaster Housing for Young People, which provides real support, particularly for those without a safety net. In Doncaster, like in so many areas, there is a critical shortage of affordable, move-on housing. Many young people are ready to live independently but are unable to do so because of a lack of appropriate accommodation. There are not enough one-bedroom properties and, as a result, young people are often penalised by things like the bedroom tax, which they simply cannot afford on basic universal credit.
Young people, particularly care leavers, who are supported by Doncaster Housing for Young People are ready to move on, but they are stuck. They are stuck not because they are unprepared or have not been supported, but because the system does not provide housing that they can realistically access.
If we are serious about improving outcomes for care leavers, we need to go further. We must increase the amount of genuinely affordable housing and ensure that they have access to it. We must expand access to practical support, such as deposit and guarantor schemes, where it is not already available. Finally, we must ensure that the welfare system as a whole works with, not against, young people who are trying to build independent lives in terms of both housing and employment. Leaving care should be the start of a future, not the beginning of a housing crisis.
For a young person starting out, the dream of independence is being replaced by the reality of hidden homelessness. For many it is simple—it is a brutal matter of affordability. In the last year alone, house prices in Ards and North Down in my Strangford constituency reached an average of £243,924—the highest average increase in all of Northern Ireland. We had the highest average increase across all the Province.
For a young person on a starting salary or a care leaver trying to find their footing, these prices are a wall, not a doorway. I have had two of my three sons, with their families, move in with me and Sandra at separate times, in a desperate attempt to save money for a home. We will always give them money to help them with a home, but the price of houses has become so much that the achievement of a mortgage is almost beyond all grasp. It is a near-impossible leap to get on to the first rung of the property ladder.
We know that 64% of care leavers in Northern Ireland present as homeless within just a few years of leaving the system—the hon. Member for Doncaster Central spoke about care leavers in particular. Without targeted support, we are setting our most vulnerable up to fail.
Statistics, by their very nature, can be cold, but the stories they tell us are urgent. When one young person in the UK becomes homeless every four minutes, we cannot afford to look away. We need more than just targets and goals. We need the 1,390 new social units projected for my borough alone to be built and allocated with urgency. I welcome the Government’s programme of house building. We need whatever houses are built. The Government’s original target of 1.5 million may not be achieved, but if 1 million were achieved over this term of government, that would be a fantastic success.
It is time we ensured that every young person in the UK has a place to truly call home. We have to help them or that will not happen. I know the Minister understands the situation only too well, but I ask him to help those most vulnerable to get on to the ladder and find an affordable place that they can call home. I would appreciate the Minister’s engagement with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland—he always does that, very helpfully. It is important that the policies that start here, driven by this Government, are the policies that we also adopt in Northern Ireland, to bring the same delivery.
By failing to build, we are stifling the growth we seek, the talent we nurture and the very future we promised to deliver. I therefore urge the Government to give young people in Banbury and across Oxfordshire the tools, the support and the resolve that we need to help me to keep my promise of helping to fix Oxfordshire’s broken housing market.
There is also the issue of the administration of housing associations. I was a councillor before I became an MP, and I remember when housing associations were thought to be the panacea for all ills. In the 1970s, they were promoted as a wonderful thing: co-operatively and locally run, responsive to tenants needs, and the other things that we would always want.
These days, it is not even a little bit like that; we have enormous housing associations, owning thousands of properties across a very wide part of the country and the cities. There is very little response to tenants’ needs and, frankly, they are well out of touch. I spend a great deal of time representing the needs of tenants, particularly those of housing associations Peabody and Clarion Housing.
However, the housing associations have in many cases leased properties to special needs housing groups. That is often quite a good thing; for example, the Peter Bedford Trust, in my area, is a very good organisation that has done a great deal of work to help mainly, but not exclusively, young people with very profound and special needs. Sadly, a couple of weeks ago I learned that Clarion Housing Association is taking back a large number of its properties, leaving a large number of young, and middle-aged, people stressed and needing to find somewhere else to go. I hope the Minister can give us some indication of the Government’s thoughts on the democracy and accountability of the very large housing associations in particular, because there is a growing feeling of alienation from them.
Evictions are happening in the private rented sector because of the implementation of section 21 no-fault evictions. I am delighted that such no-fault evictions will end when the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 finally comes into effect; that is a huge step forward. My deep regret is that they did not end in July 2024, because as soon as the Act and its contents were announced the landlords took advantage by implementing large numbers of no-fault evictions ahead of the time when they will not be able to. It is too late to do much about that, but I urge that there be some thoughts about that.
The last thing I will say, in the 39 seconds remaining, is this: colleagues have talked about rising up the housing ladder and, while I understand the language and its use, the reality is that as a society we tolerate too much housing stress, homelessness and housing poverty. We need a principle of housing as a right, rather than the idea that housing is all about an investment for your own future. Surely housing should be for housing needs; that should be the primary consideration.
With ambitions to deliver 10,000 affordable homes, YMCA and similar organisations will be vital partners in meeting the Government’s housing goals, particularly when it comes to creating genuinely affordable homes for younger people. As such, the Government continuing to engage with charitable providers, so that 100%-affordable housing projects get support, will help to ensure that the needs of young people are sufficiently recognised.
It is clear that this Government are serious about tackling the housing crisis, and about who it is hitting hardest. Government plans are essential, because they are quite literally building the foundations of a housing system that will work for the next generation. We must all play our part to ensure that they succeed. With Derby College Group becoming one of the new construction technical excellence colleges, we are ensuring the skills we need to build those foundations.
Housing Needs: Young People · Order Paper · Order Paper