Growing demand for social housing

Forget the easy headlines about the price of luxury villas and designer flats, at the hard end of the housing market, chronic affordability problems, rising mortgage repossessions and a collapse in the supply of mortgage finance are likely to bring about a sharp spike in demand for social housing according to a new report from the Local Government Association

The LGA forecasts that one in 10 people in England and Wales could be on the waiting list for social housing by 2010 and the number of people needing subsidised accommodation is likely
to rise in the next two years by 1 million people to around 5 million. A spokesman for LGA said this was possibly the highest total on the social housing waiting list since the 1940s, when a country ravaged by the bombing campaigns of World War II embarked on a comprehensive urban reconstruction. Over one and a half million people are currently on waiting lists for council housing and property made available by registered social landlords.

The LGA is calling on the government to give local councils greater freedom to borrow money on the capital markets to finance an expansion of the social house-building programme.

In their report I spotted quite a neat little diagram showing the relationships between housing and the rest of the economy - might be useful revision for the AQA unit 3 paper.