The term 'housing crisis' has become somewhat of a buzzword within both media, and political circles. It has become a catch all term for a wide range of problems faced by homeowners, private tenants and social housing tenants alike.
The thing is, while they are both linked, for the individual the problems brought about by a lack of affordable mortgages, and spiralling market value, are very different to the problems faced by a tenant staring eviction, or homelessness in the face.
When the word 'crisis' is attached to a problem it seems to make it easier for us to ignore the root causes and bumble from one reported catastrophe to another without considering the potential answers to the problem (see refugee crisis, financial crisis etc.)
So, what exactly is the housing crisis, and why have we reached crisis point?
Artist and housing blogger, Penny Anderson, writes predominantly about the problems faced by renters in Scotland. She said: "The crisis is obviously rocketing rents without control, insecure tenancies and the fact that tenants are treated as trespassers."
In short, the crisis for Penny Anderson is caused by deregulation of the market, and the stripping of rights for tenants.
ACORN are a community union who began, in part, to tackle the housing crisis and support tenants rights. Sheffield Organiser, Jonny Butcher, 33, who helps organise tenants to fight back against rogue landlords believes it is a question of power, as tenants traditional rights and access to affordable housing have been ebbed away by those in the positions of power.
In reality, there are numerous reasons why we have allowed it to get to this stage, in both the housing market and the rental market. You could conceivably argue that because the Edwardian era's Liberal Party got cold feet and failed to introduce a land tax, we are now in a position, more than a century later, where wealthy developers can horde land, without developing on it. The list of contributing factors is endless (and far reaching).
Whether it be failures to implement a land tax, Thatcher's deregulation of rental markets, the right to buy scheme, buy to let landlords, property developers, banks, NIMBY's, those 'bloody foreigners', the culmination of all these issues is that the price for people across the spectrum goes up. The extreme upshot of this is homelessness.
So, when we hear people talking about the housing crisis, what they mean in real terms is that there is no longer enough affordable housing to meet the need. The government themselves agree with this. In a 2017 white paper they admitted that the housing market is 'broken', and 250,000 homes need to be built each year to keep up with demand.
According to recent ONS statistics, 1 in 4 adults still live with their parents, with one of the main reason for this being deposits. Of those that rent, YouGov tells us that only 39% have contents insurance. Home ownership is also dwindling to around 65% of the population, down from 70% around the turn of the millennium. All this makes for bad reading for the government.
Now, it's true that it's a travesty that young people are being forced in to long term rents, or living with their parents well in to their twenties, and sometimes thirties. It's also true that having no security of tenancy, having to move every six months, while overpaying for poor conditions is terrible for peoples well being, and not, 'like being in the army' as one Tory councillor claimed.
But, those who are struggling to scrape together a deposit while living in their mum's attic, because their step dad has turned their room in to a gym when they moved out the first time, are not the people most affected by the crisis. Don't get me wrong, the situation is not ideal for them, but there are even more serious consequences for some.
The crisis we all see in our towns and cities, is the increase in people, children, families who are being made homeless because they can't afford to pay their rent, or because they've been evicted (29% of homelessness was caused by the end of shorthold tenancy with a private landlord in 2016), or because they're the victims of domestic violence (which under Sheffield council guidelines is currently only a category B priority for homelessness assistance). This is the real, humanitarian crisis we face as a society.
There is simply not enough social housing stock, or affordable rents to go around and so, it stands to reason that the people who are squeezed out are the people in society who are already the most vulnerable, the ones at the bottom, the ones with no support networks, the ones with drug addictions, the ones with chaotic lifestyles, the ones who are already persecuted.
According to last weeks National Audit Office report into Homelssness there were 77,240 households in temporary accommodation in England in March 2017, an increase of 60% since March 2011. These households included 120,540 children, an increase of 73% from March 2011.
There were 88,410 homeless households who applied for homelessness assistance during 2016-17, this figure does not include the so-called hidden homeless, who have found alternative arrangements, such as sofa surfing, and therefore don't fall in to the system, and more importantly (for the government) the figures. The charity Crisis has estimated that in early 2015 there were 3.52 million homeless adults "concealed" within households in England.
The ones deemed 'deserving' might end up in temporary accommodation like the 77,240 households mentioned above, those less fortunate (maybe the ones in Sheffield who have fallen victim to domestic violence) may join the estimated 4,134 rough sleepers on England's high streets, and doorways.
What needs to be done about this?
It sounds so simple, but the answer to the question, what do we do if there is not enough affordable housing to go around is... wait for it... build more houses!
And not just any houses, affordable houses, and better still, social housing. Social housing stock has shrunk by over half in Sheffield since the 1980's, from 80,000 houses then, to around 40,000 now.
David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, has warned that social housing funding is in "crisis" and that the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower shows it "can no longer be ignored".
He said: "We know we need more, better quality social housing. And yet, rather than putting public money into building the homes we need, we are propping up rents in a failing market."
Penny Anderson agrees. She said: "The solution is mass social housing, but also rent controls and better legislation of the private rental sector, as has partially happened in Scotland."
In Scotland, Private Residential Tenancy will come in to effect from the 1st December 2017. This will include measures limiting rent increases to only one per year with three months' notice, giving local authorities the ability to impose rent controls in areas where there are "excessive" increases in rent and modernising and streamlining the grounds under which landlords can repossess residential property.
Meanwhile in Paris, rent caps link prices to the median income locking in long-term affordable tenure. In Switzerland, only Swiss citizens can buy property, preventing overseas investors from inflating the market. And in Germany, which has the lowest rate of home ownership in the EU, rents take up a modest 23 per cent of net pay, while apartments have more than doubled in size since 1957.
The argument against rent control is that it reduces the supply of rental properties because people are less likely build rental property as a result. As we have seen, in the UK homes are not being built anyway, so it is hard to imagine how this could be slowed down any further by rent caps.
Another concern is that people in American cities which operate rent-controlled apartments, never leave. Even if the property is no longer suitable for them they are unlikely to leave because they are unlikely to find the benefit elsewhere. Thus, people who don't have rent-controlled apartments are not effected, and still pay too much.
Why this second example might be more pertinent to us in the UK, under our current leadership, is due to that leaderships unshakeable trust in the markets and private ownership to sort out all our problems. You can quite easily imagine a situation where a few homes are given rent control status while the landlord class is free to continue extorting the masses.
These radical (if not modern) proposals have the potential to make a massive difference. As do other propositions, such as confiscating land from idling house builders, mansion taxes, or simply relaxing the planning laws and building on (some) Green Belt sites (apologies to the Campaign to Protect Rural England). Anything that helps to stimulate house building must surely be considered a good thing at this stage.
That's not to suggest that building more houses would immediately eradicate homelessness, as the causes and effects of homelessness are far more nuanced than that. Long term homelessness can cause a form of institutionalisation in someone that simply giving them a house, will not remedy.
That is a whole other debate revolving around increased mental health provisions, and treatments for addiction. What building more houses might do though, is stop more people becoming unnecessarily homeless, just because they are poor.
What might help further, is if we had a government in power who were less hell bent on privatisation, shrinking of the state, and private ownership.
