Homes fit for heroes (2021) part 5 - both time and land are running out.
This might be the last pamphlet in the series. This one incorporates readers’ feedback. The plan ensures that Greater Bristol – 20% of which is South Gloucestershire - is a thriving and fair city.
If Bristol’s affordable housing crisis isn’t solved, the city will begin to decline.
The City of Bristol has the highest proportion of renters to home owners in the country: 50%. Many can’t afford to rent privately; rents have gone up 52% since 2011, but average wages are only up 24%. Here the rents are high and often the quality is poor.
This crisis affects employers of key workers too - the ones we clapped for in 2020, the heroes in the title - they can’t afford to live here. It will affect key services, NHS, adult social care, schools, foster care and more. The costs of these services will go up, local taxes up to pay for them or quality will fall.
It will be a poor legacy to leave our youth. Parents, grandparents, we have to do something.
Longer and longer waiting lists.
Another way to gauge the depth of the City of Bristol’s affordable housing crisis is by the 13,000 people and families on the housing waiting list. Our city hasn’t been building enough affordable homes since the year 2000 (and perhaps before). 800 families went on the waiting list each year, but only 300-400 affordable homes were built. Over twenty years that’s a gap of 10,000 so the waiting list gets longer and longer.
The City needs 2,000 affordable a year to meet demand and to bring down the waiting list.
During Mayor Rees’ five years – according to his team - he has achieved 9,000 homes but only about 1,500 of them are affordable; about 300 a year or 17%. The private sector who built those 9,000 homes should have been told to build 50% not 17%: i.e. 4,500 affordable homes. Land in the City is now too scarce to allow such a low percentage.
Yet constraints forced on Councils still favour the private sector.
Constrained by Green Belt and other barriers set by Government (see previous pamphlets) including weak Planning rules; all puts the Council at a disadvantage to the private sector. Government has recently relaxed a couple of those constraints. But have added state-aid in the form of Homes England grants which do deliver affordable homes but cost the tax payer close to £100,000 per home. That money ends up with property developers and land owners. This is a failing market.
Bristol has failed but neighbouring South Gloucestershire is succeeding
In Pamphlet 4 we studied South Gloucestershire Council, our neighbouring authority and with much of its population inside the “Greater Bristol Green Belt”. They are building lots of affordable homes, 35% of nearly 2,000 or so houses per year versus Bristol’s 17%.
How? Two reasons: Previous land use is often green field, so cheaper to build on. And a reader’s comment alerted me to this: the sites are so big that developers gain from economies of scale. In South Glos they can achieve 35% affordable and still make great profits.
In fact so much affordable housing is being delivered in South Gloucestershire that (Pre-Covid) their housing waiting list was going down!
NEWSFLASH:
If you are on Bristol’s housing waiting list you might be eligible to go on the South Gloucestershire list too. If you have been staying in South Glos (at a friend’s house for example) for two years or you have a job there or have close family who have lived there for five years, you might qualify to go on the their waiting list.
Map of South Glos here.
So readers, if you know someone who might be in this situation then suggest they apply. South Glos can only say no. But if just 100 people and families on Bristol’s 13,000 wait list are eligible for the South Glos list, then readers of this pamphlet will have made a real difference. But beware: bus fares will be higher; but at least it’s not as far as Newport!
Back to Bristol. This unique problem calls for a unique solution.
I see four options: (i) do nothing, (ii) let the private sector build on or outside the Green Belt, put in a £4 billion underground and subsidise its operation, (iii) let the private sector build inside the Green Belt using massive tax payer subsidies, or (iv) build inside the Green Belt as a state enterprise.
In this series of five pamphlets I have been putting the case for option four. Let the State take on (most of) the building. It needs to be higher density and help regenerate redundant brownfield land.
The State should build 4,000 homes a year over ten years, half of which must be affordable
This is a classic example of the market protecting a scare resource, in this case land, by causing the price to increase. That limits its use to only the most profitable ventures. Developers who can get hold of land are happy to build expensive homes and offices.
Instead, the State (using local businesses) should create mixed and balanced communities with infrastructure: 50% of homes to sell at market price, use that profit to fund the other 50% so they can be offered at below market rents.
That business model for the State works. It can even, just about, afford to buy up the land at market rates, pay for demolition, infrastructure and use local builders, plumbers and professionals. Densities need to be more like Clifton Down – my old ward - and neighbouring Cotham (over 100 dwellings per hectare).
But where to put these homes?
Many people have asked me exactly where these 40,000 homes would go. I believe the mayoral candidates have been asked too. I don’t know, they didn’t, I don’t think the Council’s Planning Department knows. But there are some indicators:
Bristol’s draft 2019 Local Plan described enough land for 33,500 homes at lower build densities but with some controversial sites.
As we have learned from South Glos if you have green field (or ex –airfield i.e. easy brownfield) sites it enables private developers to fund high levels of affordable housing and still make good money. In the City of Bristol this would translate as pressure to build on parks and green space; such developments are not popular. Green space needs to be protected where it improves quality of life.
If you protect parks in Bristol, the private sector will not deliver affordable homes.
Regeneration of brownfield is the way to go. In the 2019 consultation, land owners offered for sale enough sites for around 2,400 homes. To find enough brownfield for the other 37,600 (even at higher build densities) will be quite a stretch. But where I live, near Old Market, I see brownfield sites in almost every direction I walk including St Philips Marsh.
It’s a land emergency.
One approach would be for the new Bristol and WECA mayors to jointly say to Government that in the City of Bristol space has run out, the private sector has failed and the State should now build. And ask for the following:
(i) Reverse the new permitted development rights; uncontrolled conversion of old offices to flats and the raising of three or four storey blocks by two storeys – neither providing any affordable housing.
(ii) Grants to buy up old, redundant offices, buy the car parks, buy the parts of old shopping centres that aren’t sustainable, transform redundant warehouses. Put in high levels of affordable housing.
(iii) The ability to combine housing waiting lists within “Greater Bristol”.
West of England Combined Authority Mayor (metro mayor) – the vote is on Thursday 6th May
Spatial Development is the remit of the WECA mayor. He needs to accept that within the “Greater Bristol” Area (includes that part of South Glos within the Green Belt) the affordable housing target should be increased to 50%. There will be howls from developers and landowners. But if the State, WECA, Goram Homes or whatever can achieve 50% (which I say it can) and landowners can’t then they can sell their site to the State at the market price. This action could also be argued on national planning grounds: efficient use of land, retention of green belt and keeping a thriving city.
WECA also has access to one billion pounds to stimulate growth. Bristol, I am told, is the region’s growth engine. It needs a workforce who can live nearby.
And National Government?
If the Government objects to its precious private sector not getting favourable treatment then they are responsible for biting the hand that feeds them. Bristol is the only Core City that remits business rates back to London, nearly £100 million a year pre-Covid. The argument is we must restore Bristol’s housing balance so key workers can live here and the city can grow.
Good public transport is needed too, also WECA’s responsibility. An underground? I don’t know. The metropolis of Greater Bristol needs a rebalance.
The aftermath of Covid 19 will create opportunities, we must take them.
Your vote
Vote wisely on Thursday 6th May. The new WECA mayor and perhaps new Bristol mayor need to work together, go to Government and make this happen for the good of the people of Greater Bristol.
Useful links:
Clive’s book: After The Revolution
Article in The Bristol Cable: Housing Hustings underlines scale of the crisis
And slightly belligerently: Do we need councillors at all? Guess who wrote that!