For those who have read our election manifesto, you may know that social housing is a primary concern of ours ahead of the upcoming election. Many young people and families on low to middle incomes in Battersea struggle to afford to rent or buy a decent home. We’ve had plenty of expensive housing come into Battersea in recent years, and we want to see more social housing, with 25% of all new building developments allocated as social housing.
Shelter released a report in 2019 called A Vision for Social Housing which shows that a lack of readily available social housing has led to a “drop in the numbers of young families moving into ownership, the rise of pensioners in insecure unaffordable private rentals, and the homelessness that scars our society”.
There’s further information in this BBC article.
As a hub of the local community, we can see that overcrowding, evictions, rent arrears and homelessness are all on the rise.
We’re concerned about the lack of appropriate government funding to invest in social rented homes. This is often made worse by a lack of effective regulation in the private rented sector, which means that vulnerable people become even more vulnerable. On top of housing benefit cuts, it’s clear to see why affordable living seems out of reach for so many people.
We’re calling on the government to take urgent action to invest in a national house building programme to increase the supply of all types of housing, particularly social rented homes, as well as action to improve the affordability, accessibility, security, safety and quality of housing across all sectors. We want to see real results in our local community. We need more social housing. We believe a minimum of 25% of all new building developments should be allocated as social housing.
Want to sign up to the KLS newsletter? Click here to be updated on how we are serving people in Battersea.