Figures show that, in 2015, the number of households evicted by county court-appointed bailiffs hit 42,728 (most households, of course, contain more than one person). That number is not only the highest it’s ever been, it’s climbed by more than 53% in just five years, an even greater insecurity for Britain’s hard-working families. …
There’s something more philosophical at the root of the housing crisis, too, I think. It’s this: over the last 30 years we’ve come to see housing not as a form of infrastructure or public service, but as an asset. Even as the government has taken baby steps towards getting more homes built, most of its policies – housing benefit caps, the replacement of social rents with “affordable” rents, the frankly hilarious reclassification of £450,000 starter homes as “affordable housing” – have been built on the assumption that you only have a right to a home if you can pay for it.
This assumption has remained unshaken, no matter how ludicrous housing costs have become. And that’s a problem. Those eviction figures are a reminder that a growing pool of people can’t afford a home. But you don’t stop needing a roof over your head just because you can’t afford one.
The government has made it clear it doesn’t think the state is in the business of providing people with homes. As should be blindingly obvious by now, the market isn’t going to do it either. And demand for housing keeps growing. You think those eviction figures are frightening now? You wait. Just you wait.
