In this article published in The Fifth State, Hal Pawson (Emeritus Professor of Housing Research and Policy and Associate Director at the City Futures Research Centre, UNWS) and Steve Pomeroy (Industry Professor of Health, Aging and Society at McMaster University),...
What does it mean to say the cost of housing is affordable or unaffordable? When are rents charged truly affordable? Do governments in Scotland, or at UK level, use affordability in a consistent sense when setting policies relating to how much we pay for our...
Last year Welsh Government published a Green Paper calling for evidence on Securing a path towards Adequate Housing – including Fair Rents and Affordability. Alongside the Green Paper, Welsh Government simultaneously published commissioned research from Alma...
The 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) had wide-ranging impacts on the global economy, including immense and long-lasting effects on housing markets and insecurity. Economic scarring took place across many nations, and the UK housing market experienced a particularly...
In this blog, Anna Clarke, Director of Policy and Public Affairs at The Housing Forum, discusses the critical importance of housing in upcoming election manifestos, outlining key policy recommendations to address housing supply, affordability, and quality. What should...
Potential government measures to help more people get on the housing ladder are unlikely to help first-time buyers. UK borrowers may see the return of larger, longer-term loans as the government plans a comprehensive review of the mortgage market with the aim...
These two excellent papers by Geoff Meen are a welcome reminder that ‘demand and supply side policies [...] are complements rather than alternatives.’ Whether housing is affordable is partly a value judgment. Cardboard boxes are pretty affordable, but few...
Effective policy interventions to improve housing affordability depend on making an accurate diagnosis of the problem. In his paper, Professor Meen proposes two valuable measures of housing affordability. However, fluctuations in these measures could be down to a...
The UK’s housing problems are not about the average household, but about the distribution of outcomes across different types of households. The majority of the population do not face difficulties with paying their mortgages or their rents, but the problems are...