A place to call home

The Daily Telegraph has become exercised about the housing shortage. Apparently houses worth over £2 million are being kept off the market because their owners can’t find anywhere to downsize to. I’m aware of this problem because my brother and his partner could sell their house in Croydon, have found the house they want in Sussex but the man who owns that can’t find anywhere to move to.

The Telegraph highlights one of the causes. but I don’t see, and maybe it isn’t relevant, the effects of people buying up houses as an investment for their “portfolios”.

I read of a local man in Oxfordshire who had purchased 50 houses for investment. The Dorset village where my husband’s family lived for centuries, is now almost entirely empty in the week. My father-in-law knew the names of all the people who lived in these houses and worked the fields or on the estate when he was growing up there in the 20s and 30s. Now these are second homes.

I hate housing being used as simply for investment though I can’t in all honesty blame those who can do it. But surely one of the effects must be the fracturing of communities and a dividing between the property rich and those who just can’t afford to buy. The raw separation between high earners and the rest of us is so damaging – in health, in education and in life expectancy to say nothing of happiness and a sense of security.

I was castigated by a woman for sending my children to independent schools. Apparently she “happened to believe there is such a thing as society”. But she didn’t seem to think that her own second home in Glasgow had any damaging effects on society. It’s very acceptable to have a go at people who pay for education but there seems to be a reluctance to make the same judgements of people who deprive communities of housing and (until the slump) reap massive benefits.

Tony Blair doesn’t think it’s the inequality that matters, it’s the general economic health that matters. He’s wrong although I’m sure he would like to think otherwise given the vast disparities in wealth during his government.

Trickle-down doesn’t work and every bit of decent research shows that it is the difference that matters. Not being able to afford to buy a roof over ones head despite working full-time seems to me to be damaging, not just for the individuals affected but for the rest of the communities. For the house or flat that young people beginning family and professional life might aspire to, to be bought up by development companies or by the property wealthy to increase their already bulging fortunes is profoundly wrong in my view. I’m fortunate enough to have a house (just the one) in a pleasant neighbourhood, which is also a home. I just wish that other people could have them too.