The Glastonbury Generation and Affordable Housing
I got a lot of street cred when I told my teenage son and daughter that I was opening this year?s Glastonbury event, but they were a bit disappointed when I explained that the event was taking place a few weeks after the main festival and was to debate the future of affordable housing.
The conference, organised jointly by the CIH, Mendip Housing and the Aster Group, was a terrific opportunity to hear from Michael Eavis, who founded the Glastonbury Festival and is committed to raising the profile of affordable housing and to listen to Matthew Taylor MP who had only launched his review of rural communities the day before. There was also a fascinating presentation by Professor Steve Wilcox on the state of the housing market across the UK.
One of the highlights was the results of the survey we had carried out with our partners and volunteers at the Glastonbury Festival at the end of June. 1,100 young people were questioned about their housing aspirations and the responses provided uncomfortable reading. Delegates, and the local TV stations who turned up to listen to the speakers, were fascinated to learn that so many young people in the south-west (almost 28%) were still living with their parents and the same number said that the housing they needed was not available. What was pleasing to see was that four fifths of those questioned (82%) said that they would be pleased or OK about affordable housing being built close to where they live.
Matthew Taylor?s review ?Living Working Countryside? has been warmly welcomed by CIH as a way forward for rural areas under threat of generational imbalance and economic decline. I know we are particularly supportive of the review?s more sensitive interpretation of sustainability (see the CIH press release). In other words, we need to balance social, economic and environmental sustainability to ensure that villages are maintained as vibrant places that allow people to live and work locally. If villages are inhabited predominantly by retired, wealthy individuals and younger, working families are priced out, the long-term sustainability of entire communities risks being lost.
I?m not sure that there can be any more important debates that the one that took place at the Glastonbury event, and anything more pertinent and crucial to young people.
I welcome your views on the challenges for rural communities in particular, and the experiences young people in your area are having in trying to find a home they can afford.
The conference, organised jointly by the CIH, Mendip Housing and the Aster Group, was a terrific opportunity to hear from Michael Eavis, who founded the Glastonbury Festival and is committed to raising the profile of affordable housing and to listen to Matthew Taylor MP who had only launched his review of rural communities the day before. There was also a fascinating presentation by Professor Steve Wilcox on the state of the housing market across the UK.
One of the highlights was the results of the survey we had carried out with our partners and volunteers at the Glastonbury Festival at the end of June. 1,100 young people were questioned about their housing aspirations and the responses provided uncomfortable reading. Delegates, and the local TV stations who turned up to listen to the speakers, were fascinated to learn that so many young people in the south-west (almost 28%) were still living with their parents and the same number said that the housing they needed was not available. What was pleasing to see was that four fifths of those questioned (82%) said that they would be pleased or OK about affordable housing being built close to where they live.
Matthew Taylor?s review ?Living Working Countryside? has been warmly welcomed by CIH as a way forward for rural areas under threat of generational imbalance and economic decline. I know we are particularly supportive of the review?s more sensitive interpretation of sustainability (see the CIH press release). In other words, we need to balance social, economic and environmental sustainability to ensure that villages are maintained as vibrant places that allow people to live and work locally. If villages are inhabited predominantly by retired, wealthy individuals and younger, working families are priced out, the long-term sustainability of entire communities risks being lost.
I?m not sure that there can be any more important debates that the one that took place at the Glastonbury event, and anything more pertinent and crucial to young people.
I welcome your views on the challenges for rural communities in particular, and the experiences young people in your area are having in trying to find a home they can afford.
posted by Howard Farrand at
00:00
2 Comments:
How remarkable that it has recently become very newsworthy to debate the future of affordable housing when prices even given the ?credit crunch? is finally slowing the exponential increase witnessed in recent decades. Pity the debate is 27 years too late- The 1980 Housing Act and subsequent housing legislation effectively paved the way for the current situation- and guess what NO ONE in the media wanted to touch it- maybe because many of them were too busy joining the gravy train.
How remarkable that the dreaded word ?INFLATION? has reappeared in the media- rarely heard since it was so common pre ?Thatcher in Tory anti Labour invective. Somehow when in the 80?s; late 90?s and as recent as last year when property prices increased on a weekly if not a daily basis and everyone and their dog wanted to make a fast buck with property they had no intention of living in the word was never heard- wasn?t even part of the RPI index calculation
SHOCK! HORROR !! Delegates, and the local TV stations were fascinated to learn that so many young people in the south-west (almost 28%) were still living with their parents and that the housing they needed was not available.
What planet had they spent the last 20 years on- was it perchance planet ? I?M O.K JACK".
Collectively ?albeit under pressure from the corporate world and the media, owner occupiers whether due to fear or greed have over the last 20 odd years made the bed for themselves and the next generation (atleast)of all tenures to lie in.
I and thousands of others were driven out of rural England because the Ag & Fish and agri-business took over. It became nearly impossible to get an affordable smallholding, 'farmers' no longer needed to employ many people, and second-homers bought up the farm cottages. Bring back smallholdings, increase organic farms and local food businesses, outlaw second-homes until those who need homes have them.
Then perhaps some of we exiles can go home.
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