House and home

Recently the topic of affordable housing has been discussed in the media.  With a chronic shortage of this, and with any help that is given going (rightly, I suppose) to those worst off, it's those people who are in the middle who are going to struggle most to get on the property ladder.  By in the middle I don't necessarily mean 'middle class.'  I mean those people who earn enough to live on, but not enough to save up and buy.  This will probably include people we think of as middle class today; office workers, even nurses and teachers. 

So it seems that in the future more people will have to rent, either alone or with friends.  Even buying with friends might become an option.  I found it interesting that the recent BBC series Sherlock showed two young men sharing a flat, for financial reasons, something that people often don't quite 'get.'  Of course, there was a recurring theme that half the people they met would assume that they were sharing because they were a couple. I've encountered that myself, even when I've been sharing with 2 or 3 people!  

 But is it necessarily a bad thing that fewer people will be homeowners?  Perhaps not, in many countries it's more usual to rent than to buy.  But as commentators have said, certain things would need to change if renting were to become more popular.  As I've written about before, tenants are often at a disadvantage compared to homeowners.  It's unlikely many landlords will feel the need to invest in extra energy efficiency measures like insulation or solar pannels as they will derive little personal benefit.  The same goes for decoration and non-essential repairs and upgrades.  It's understandable, especially if you have long term tenants and haven't got to attract new ones.  Perhaps landlords need to be given some incentive to do this, perhaps tenants need to be able to badger their landlords more.  Perhaps if people are living in rented property for longer, rather than seeing it as temporary, they need to have more opportunity to do work (decoration, refurbishment) themselves.  To be able to feel settled, to make a place their own.

To make living in rented property attractive, these aren't the only changes that would need to take place.  Society often seems to take it for granted that 'proper' adults own their own home, and share it only with a partner.  Why?  As a result, most official paperwork and benefits are based around each household being occupied only as a single unit.  Council tax, for example, is based on the incomes of two adults living in each house leading to some downright unfair effects (but that's a whole other rant).  Even government research surveys find it hard to cope with two or more non-related, non-partners, sharing a home, and surely that will become more normal.  Officialdom needs to recognise that the two adult (and two income) per household model does not reflect all households.

There is a danger that if property becomes concentrated in the hands of a rich minority then theose worse off will have little choice but to accept lower standards.  That's something to be careful about.  And there's the pension situation: many people living on pensions today can afford to do so (just) because they own their own homes and don't have to pay rent.  If fewer pensioners in the future own their own homes, and have to pay rent from ever-decreasing pensions, that's something that needs to be addressed- sooner rather than later.  But will it- or any of these concerns?  Or is too much like joined-up, long term thinking for governments which seem to only deal with the immediate problem?