Hidden Homelessness in Mid Sussex: Why We Need Urgent Action on Affordable Housing

A significant amount of the work of an MP is ‘casework’ - helping people who come to you with specific problems. Over the summer, much of my focus has been on supporting constituents who urgently need my help. It is important and demanding work but confidential and not something we can share the specifics of publicly. To give an idea though, I have supported a family getting a passport for a British baby born overseas, and I have been working with a household living in unsafe housing.

Having a safe place you can call home is something that too many people struggle with. In Mid Sussex, whilst the rates of rough sleeping are thankfully very low, there is a significant amount of ‘hidden homelessness’. Whether it is grown up children staying in their parents’ home because there isn’t suitable, affordable accommodation to call their own, or sofa surfing when a relationship has broken down, or someone being evicted and moving into temporary accommodation, each situation has profound impacts on those caught up in it, and on society at large. House building policy often grabs the headlines, but underneath that I worry that we can lose sight of the very real crisis that housing policy is trying to solve - the challenge that people in every community face of not being able to afford to rent or buy a decent home close to family and work.

The new government has said that building affordable and social houses is one of their top priorities. This is long overdue: last week the Liberal Democrats published stats that showed that four out of five councils have had people waiting for housing for more than a decade. One option that the Labour government needs to consider is to change how land in line for development is valued. Currently councils have to pay ‘hope value’ - the value of the land if it had planning permission in place - but if it were based upon current market value it would be much more affordable for a local authority to enable the building of the social homes its area needs. As well as providing a secure roof over the heads of people who desperately need it, cash strapped councils could also reduce the costs they face in providing temporary accommodation.