Campaigning charity Shelter claims social rents are 64% more affordable than private rents, with social tenants in England having to pay on average £828 less per month in rent than private tenants.
The charity's analysis of the latest government rent data shows if more social housing was available, renters across the country would be able to save thousands a year on their housing costs.
If they could move from private renting into social housing, renters in London would be more than £1,400 better off a month on average, in the East of England £630 a month and in the South East £730 a month better off.
But the charity claims that with a chronic shortage of social housing available and private rents hitting record highs, an increasing number of people are being priced out and tipped into homelessness. It adds that a record 145,800 children are homeless and living in temporary accommodation with their families.
Shelter argues a new generation of genuinely affordable social homes is essential to insulate families from homelessness and keep communities together.
In a survey of more than 2,000 social renters, carried out by Shelter and YouGov, 70% of social tenants said without their social home they could not afford to live in their local area.
A statement from the charity says: “Compared to the insecurity of private renting, social housing offers long term secure tenancies with rents tied to local incomes. Part of Shelter’s research looked specifically at people who have moved from private renting into a social home in the last 10 years, and the difference it has made - 74% of people said they are less worried about having to move; 74% said they are less worried about becoming homeless; and 71% said there is more stability in their life as a result.”
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, comments: “Social housing enables people to live better lives, but we just don’t have enough of it – not by a long shot. Decades of failure to build genuinely affordable social homes has left the country in a dire state.
“We continually hit shameful records with numbers of homeless children and sky-high rents, as more and more families are plunged into homelessness. For many this means years of upheaval and uncertainty, stripping the chance for families to set down roots, for children to thrive at school and taking the power away from people to live the life they want.
“The housing emergency has been wilfully ignored for too long. All the signs point to one solution and it's the only one that works. Now that a General Election has been called we cannot afford to waste any time. All political parties must commit to building genuinely affordable social homes - we need 90,000 a year over ten years to end the housing emergency for good.”
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Social rents are ludicrously cheap.
With interest rates at over 5% Social Housing providers don't change anywhere near enough to be able to build or buy more housing stock for the rent they charge. Also they pay top price for maintenance work. 13 years ago the Council paid £16000 to replace the kitchen in a flat above one we own. We spent £12000 on a new kitchen, rewiring, soundproofing all ceilings, replastering the whole flat, carpeting and decorating. The Council charge around £100 a week for their flat (so more than 3 years rent to cover the cost of the kitchen, never mind any other costs). LHA is £795 a month so there's no excuse for charging so little. Open market rent is around £900.
I don't understand why any social rent is less than LHA, but even if they were set at LHA it would just mean the tax payer taking the hit not the housing provider!
I agree we need more social housing but we also need a stronger economy that provides jobs with higher pay to lift people out of needing support.
Tricia - corporatism, it functions via the addiction to cheap labour. And when cheap labour dries up, you import more working age (predominantly) men to do those jobs and keep wages low. Put a "humanitarian" mask over it. And call everyone racist if they disagree with it. Rinse and repeat. British society is !@%£"!!!!
What! No Tenants Good Private Landlords Bad ideological dogma Polly Bleat?
Has the penny finally dropped?
Keep beating up private LLs =Less private landlords= higher rents.
She's a muppet.
Good idea , move from a prestigious comfortable safe enclave to a crime ridden dump
You can spend the savings on security, youll need it
How about Shelter offering to finance the building of social housing.
😂😂
Well Suggested- Well- Polly can delve into her own pocket to start!!
I was stupid enough to believe that shelter actually supplied homeless people with housing. I can’t understand how this is called a housing charity. I’ve asked friends and they all believed that too. God I’m thick.
That cheered me up 😂😂
£45 million raised in 2022/23 and doubt if they built one single house!
William - a career in stand-up awaits with one liners like that!
No s**t sherlock! Polly has taken a reality pill at last, more social housing rather than vilification of private landlords!
Durrrhhh !
“Shameful”. I see that word all the time in Shelter’s communications. As a business they are shameful for masquerading as a charity.
Social rents need to go up !! We as tax payers prop them up far too much 🤔
Where do you think the extra will come from? Benefits!
There are a lot of well off people living in cheap subsidized social housing, union and council leaders on 100k+ so make them pay full market rent
Benefits shouldn't pay for everything. I believe benefits should be a helping hand during difficult times, not a life choice. You should not be able to live off benefits.
Laughable article.
Why not social food and social everything whilst we at it?
These people are not right in the head. They are totally ignorant to the UK's financial plight which is that of a country in huge, huge finincial difficulties, already spending way more than it takes. How much evidence do we need before these thick people understand a government is totally incapable of operating with any financial responsibility. Look at the NHS and other government run services - swallow money and totally useless.
When will government, these charities, and all rhe landlord bashers wake up to the bloody obvious?
High mortdade interest rates, (to control supply side inflation does not work, in fact makes in worse), rent controls, selling off social housing in rhe first place, unfair compliance rules, planning, licensing, removing the right to take possession of one's own property, ridiculous tax rules so making any profit to invest in the property is impossible...have caused this crisis...none of these causes was down to landlords, it was idiotic politicians who are economically illiterate.
The UK already has the fourth highest % of social housing stock in the OECD, we don't need more. There are wider problems in the housing market and the economy but more social housing is not the solution.
It follows then that we have the fourth highest % of workshy lazy people, and I fully expect that to be the case
There is not just a housing crisis but a cost of living crisis. The price of everything has increased. We need a government that doesn’t waste taxpayers’ money. On the news a Romanian benefits fraud to the tune of £59 million was discovered. The gang were found out by the Romanian government and reported to us. We need to wise up. The government are wasteful and inefficient. Labour will be just as bad.
Labour will be much worse handing out even more cash to the wrong people
It was Bulgarians, Margaret. They haven't found the Romanian one yet (you can be in doubt there will be one!)
When I entered this business in the 90s I had no intention or wish to be anything to do with or compete with social housing, on price or anything else. I used to see in the main people on a journey to buying their own home and moving on after a couple of years. Now we’ve been forced into being long term housing buried in rules due to nothing but bad governance. You know what to do shelter get building. Oh I forgot you don’t build, you don’t provide housing, you just play numbers . Shelter the charity (Business) that houses no one.
£828 less per month in rent, this cannot be right. Only two of my properties pay more that £828 in total each month!
They will only use London numbers as they have the greatest margin to use. Anywhere else in the country would be a little narrower, that wouldn't make good headlines though.
The housing crisis has been caused by government not landlords or councils. Councils have been preventented from reinvesting money made from council house sales into building for so long that they no longer have the skilled teams they once had so are in the hands of the market when it comes to maintenance. Once I invested by buying run down properties and turning them into nice homes that I rented out. Now, skilled tradespeople are so hard to find and so expensive that it isn't worth my effort. Meanwhile, my tenants regard social housing as undesirable and they associate it with poor maintenance, faceless bureaucrats and undesirable neighbours. It's noticeable that a high proportion of the scandalous news stories about poorly maintained properties turn out to be in the social housing sector.
Although the BBC would have you believe the PRS are the culprits! I agree Alison totally with your comment regarding tradespeople. We need more young people on apprenticeship rather than studying some of the daft degree courses on offer at the lesser universities. On graduation they get a low paid job and are never able to pay back the student loan.
Margaret, how right you are £60m fraud right under their noses by a small group of young people that you can count on one hand, would that be equivalent to £12m each goodness me by people who came into the Country in recent years, running a Shop as a front, it begs the question how much is the system being milky, it must be easy although they are coming highly educated those days, computerisation & mobile phones make it all possible for them it couldn’t have happened in the old days some progress ?.
Didn’t they get a light sentence good job it wasn’t a Private landlord he’d get penalised as much for a couple of unlicensed houses in pre 2006 condition.
I don't where they get their figures from I don't even charge £828 per month so unless their are landlords paying tenants to stay there it's utter twaddle
Maybe including rents in London and SE boosts the national average up?
I charge £650 and £600 for two flats in Bournemouth where most rents are sky high.
@Jan Hall - I am in Bournemouth as well. Your altruism could come back to bite you on the backside if you don't keep your rents near market value. With Sir Kneeler and Co on the horizon, your costs of doing business could go even higher than with the current bunch of incompetents. I have houses but my sons have flats. Market rents and happy tenants can happen. Just saying ....
As always the question remains - who’s going to pay for the eutopia that these professional activists demand?
Thoroughly irresponsible to sit on the side lines self righteously screaming that everyone should have a lovely home for next to no money. Well everything does cost money, and if the tenant isn’t paying why should it fall to the hard working tax payer who’s often scrabbling to keep their own family fed and housed?
Shelter aren’t contributing even £1 to the building of homes.
Well said Steve.
Agree social rents are clearly much too low, and this doesn't encourage people to move on or indeed get a job.
She sounds a bit like she has just read George Orwell’s Animal Farm .
Was the Housing emergency critical before The Conservative Government adopted a policy to drive out small Mom and Pop landlords out by taxation and regulation.
Gove Allowing Councils to manipulate Licensing to cover whole areas on suspect flimsy evidence .
According to Shelter there are 1.4 Million Fewer Social Houses than in 1980 , and Currently 1.3 million on waiting lists . Add uncontrolled Immigration of plus 700,00 a year .
If a Practical solution is to be found it must support Private landlords .
No government Stephen will support private landlords. It is not a vote winner!
It must support PRS, I think this is why Labour have gone almost mute on this subject. They know that if they push through with the nonsense it will backfire spectacularly.
@Margaret Venn - Reform support Landlords and have put it in their Manifesto in back and white. I know they will not have enough support this time round to win but if we do not change our voting patterns then NOTHING will change. At the least it will send a message to woke left leaning conservatives that they have lost their core supporters
Catherine
I watched Nigel’s speech last night and thought it was very good. Richard Tice, nice though he is, cannot be described as a rousing speaker. The bit I liked best was Nigel’s honesty in saying REFORM’s aim was to become the Opposition and then government at the election in 2029. He handled the press brilliantly.
I think it’s very important to get the word out that Shelter DO NOT house anyone.
The perception is that they are housing homeless but they do not house a single person, even though they generate over 48 million each year in revenue.
The whole organisation is an utter scam
Just think how many homes you can build for 48 million!
The don't generate £48m they dupe the British public into donating that amount. They fraudulently let them believe they are providing housing for homeless people.
When I saw the heading of an alternative, I automatically thought Shelter will start providing subsidized housing to the ones who need it. After all what are they doing with charity money they receive? Pay themselves by sitting at their laptops, having coffee, whilst having meetings with their colleagues to demonize the private rented sector, send articles to media, who wants the public to swallow the lies without any proper investigation about the truth of the housing market. For Shelter, the alternatives need to be for them to actively spend their donation receipts on providing housing and maintaining these housing and looking after their tenants. Then they can call themselves housing charity, not just exist to Big talk and helping themselves with huge payouts of 150k for Polly Bleat, not Neate.
£45,000,000, YES £45 millions pounds worth of donations were raised in 2022/23 and I doubt if they built one single house!
I personally would never give to Shelter due to their anti landlord attitude when we have approached them in the past despite trying to help vulnerable prospective tenants.
Makes my blood boil.
Too busy spending money on the £ gravy train!!
Why are there so many homeless charities, personally I think there should only be 1.
Cut out all the expensive overhead and salaries and put this towards building affordable rented homes.
Shock, horror … NO … then they wouldn’t be able to complain whilst taking their big fat salaries and pensions.
Hypocrisy at its finest.,
Be fair - they are like MPs. Once they are on the gravy train, it is difficult to get off.
@Annoyed Landlord - as our local MP George Freeman complained - it was really hard for him to make ends meet on a salary of £118300. As you can imagine he got a lot of sympathy from local factory workers.......not!
Selhurst, £48m that’s a lot of dosh add £50m Benefit fraud by a handful of individuals that’s virtually £100m without even looking there must be billions going to waste, start the cement mixer.
So the Government register of charities provides the following figures. Total Gross income for Shelter published in March 23 was £73.76m. At lease 7.3m was from Govt Grants and contracts. Shelter then spent £33.8m on FUND RAISING!!!! The £45M was only the income from donations and legacies according to this official Govt Website. Current figures suggest (depending on area and quality of build that a 3 bed house can cost between £150K to £300 to build) so assuming build cost/quality on social homes not high end and then add on costs for land etc we could go with the £300k figure per property. Polly Bleat suggests a figure of 90k houses a year. For the total charity income of £73m divided by £300k you could build 243000 social homes per year and have a healthy sum for administration and Polly's lucrative salary! So Polly - there is your answer!!!! See register-of-charities.charitycommission for source of figures
Wash your mouth out!!! You expect Shelter do what it says on the tin and *PROVIDE SHELTER? What a novel idea and one that would HORRIFY Polly Bleat and have her clutching her pearls.
*Hit something on the keyboard and it got posted too soon.
It's actually 243 homes. Otherwise I completely agree ...
Excellent analysis Catherine!
Yes I just picked up the mistake with the decimal point but 243 homes is still a useful contribution.
@Annoyed Landlord 😂
@Grumpy Doug - yes sorry - ignored my decimal point.....which takes something away from my argument 😂 but I guess 243 would a year would be better than none
For Shelter to build even ONE would be an achievement and something to be proud of.
Interesting how the charitable status of private schools is being debated at the moment. They are institutions that provide their facilities for some local community use, subsidised places for local students who wouldn't otherwise be able to go, various other fundraising efforts for community projects. Their charitable status is justified (in my opinion) or at least arguable.
Then we look at Shelter - what do they actually do that is charitable? All I can see is that they are a political lobbying group. And they provide information on their website to tenants under the threat of eviction - information that is readily available through many other sources, including official Government websites. That is not charitable work.
Perhaps the NRLA could publicly question their charitable status? Not just them either but a whole load of so-called charities also (start with every one that pays over £100k salaries and you won't be far off the mark).
I won't hold my breath, of course...
Same cockeyed thinking re private schools. So a parent who sends their offspring to private education still supports state education thru taxation but does not use state education resource so effectively pays twice. I saw a report saying that take up of private school places had dropped this year as a result of threatened policy. So what happens to these children - they go into state system. And will that 20% tax from private schools be funnelled into state education - I doubt it = even more pressure on state schools. It has the same skewed thinking as their approach to the PRS
Catherine
I saw some left wing fool on television complaining that taxpayers were subsidising private school parents, when the reverse is true. Not one person challenged him exactly as you have stated. 🤔
Jan Hall, you’d have a long ways to go to be as thick as the government that invited Shelter into the Parliament Select Committee to advise on Housing Policy.
Why not ask landlord that knows the Business, we didn’t have a seat at the table.
Many councils are trying to set up property development companies to part-solve the lack of social housing themselves. Some will even consider public-private collaborations, rather than just get the begging bowl out to central government. If they box clever, they will provide the land and planning permission and some seed capital and guaranteed early sales, and the professional private builders do the building and get to make a moderate profit on the private sales. Win win! There are tens of thousands of acres of rancid old council estates that could be redeveloped into better-quality housing, better transport, better shops and other infrastructure, and the land already owned and "free".
Unfortunately the land is usually the problem because to redevelop the spacious plots and low-rise poor-quality housing of earlier eras and use the land more efficiently and with a mix of tenures and property sizes, you have to move the tenants out temporarily - and they won't move. They're entitled, you see, by their inheritable lifetime tenancies, which idiotic councils and HAs granted them without a thought of future redevelopment potential.
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