By The Guardian
Housing as an election issue will, no matter the outcome, at least bring the topic of affordable housing (or rather, the lack of) front and centre of public debate.
As we have noted several times with the other recent articles focused on the housing crises, a "do nothing" approach will not change the path we are on, and an increasing number of our population will be forever excluded from home ownership.
The importance for children to choose their parents very carefully at the time of birth is not a sustainable strategy for the future!
We are now at a stage in the housing crises where if parents can not have adult children return home in oder to save for a deposit, lend them the deposit directly or leave the children a house in inheritance -then the younger generations coming through may effectively be permanent excluded from the unsubsidised/unassisted property market. Surely that's not right.
We can and must do more with different models of secure tenure, be it as rentals or some form of shared equity or progressive ownership, but the cultural value and personal financial security that comes with home ownership must not be lost either. There's room and need for both.
Collectively we need to keep the pressure on local and central government -particularly through the election debates- to promote new models and system change in the housing continuum in order for us to have different outcomes than the policies and regulatory settings of the past 30 years have brought us.
