The Broken Dream of Homeownership, with Vicky Spratt
š Vicky Spratt is a writer, journalist, activist and campaigner whose work regularly shapes public policy. She is currently the i Paper's Housing Correspondent and is a writer and editor at Refinery29. Her campaign, Make Renting Fair, highlighted the plight of āGeneration Rentā and succeeded in getting letting fees for tenants in England banned.
šø Today, we talk to Vicky about housing and social justice, the British dream of homeownership, and more.
1ļøā£ Vicky is passionate about getting as many people to read about important things as possible, so we trace her journey and what made her so dedicated to highlighting the flaws in the housing system.
2ļøā£ The gender housing gap is yet another obstacle that women have to face, and Vicky tells us a bit more about the issue as well as how we should tackle it.
3ļøā£ The dream of owning a property is real, but itās also completely out of reach for so many. We address the problems with the housing market, the role that privilege plays in buying a home, as well as the practical things you can do to try to save up for a place of your own.
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1. making renting fair
āCost of living sounds quite airy-fairy. Itās very existential. Weāre talking about people who are literally saying āI cannot afford to pay my energy bill, my rent, and do a food shop. So Iām going to have to pick oneā. ā
Home is the centre of your life. It's where everything starts, where you wake up every day. It's where you go to sleep. It's also where you're most vulnerable. But it's also where you should be safe. And for so many people in the UK country today, home does not feel like a safe place.
Back in 2016, Vicky had to pay over Ā£2000 just because she was moving house. And at the time, letting agents would charge you fees to move, endless fees that for practically everything. This felt hugely unfair, which is why she decided to start the campaign, Making Renting Fair.
Making Renting Fair was a 2016 campaign that highlighted the plight of 'Generation Rent' and succeeded in getting letting fees for tenants in England banned.
No one should be getting into debt just for not owning a house - and Vicky certainly felt like she was being penalised for not being a homeowner.
After successfully campaigning, Vicky started to write her book, Tenants, because she wanted as many people to read about the important issue of housing as possible.
2. the gender housing gap
The Women's Budget Group did some research on housing affordability around the country. They first did this piece of research in 2019, it was a report called No Homes of Our Own, and they looked at average house prices, average rents and average wages in every area of the country. The findings were shocking.
There is not a single place in Britain where it is affordable for a woman on her own to buy or rent a home.
The way you gauge affordability in housing, broadly speaking, is that your outgoings should be no more than a third of your take-home pay, so that's your income after tax. That means the research found that women's income after tax would not cover the average house prices or rents in most areas of the country.
The reason for the gender housing gap is that women tend to earn less than men. Itās very important to highlight the link between these two issues because it means that women aren't being paid properly in the workplace, so they're less likely to be able to live secure, stable, fulfilling lives, which is a huge problem for society.
We have seen house prices reach their highest point of inflation for decades because of the pandemic, they are now at their highest since the 2008 financial crash. This means that the problem has got worse, and until we fix it, it will really reinforce gender inequality.
However, fixing house prices is not straightforward. Rent inflation is also an all-time high right now because of the pandemic, and in the private rented sector, where people rent from private landlords, fixing that is slightly more straightforward. In Scotland, they have rent pressure zones, where local authorities can apply to the government to have rents controlled when they're getting too high. England could do something similar.
3. getting on the housing ladder
Financial privilege plays a huge role in getting on the housing ladder. Vicky is adamant that we're penalising people who don't have wealth, and that's really also what the housing crisis is about.
People are desperate, and they want to buy a home at all costs, quite literally, because the alternative is so terrifying. And the alternative living in a privately rented home where the landlord could put your rent up at any time, where it could become unaffordable, and price you out of your community.
If we had secure, properly regulated private renting and crucially, more social housing, then house prices would level out and people wouldn't be so desperate to get on the property ladder.
There are an increasing number of people whose parents are re-mortaging, taking out loans, and taking money out of their pensions to help them get on the housing ladder. The issue is, these people arenāt wealthy, and they need to pay that money back. There are, of course, also people whose parents are wealthy - and that is why itās important to be open about financial privilege.
Everyone's desperation to pour money into housing so that their kids will be secure has caused prices to go even higher.
If youāre interested in buying a home, it is well worth looking at affordability schemes like Help to Buy. The way this works is that you have 5% deposit, and then you take out an equity loan from the government, and then you take a mortgage out as well. So you have a loan to the government mortgage and your little deposit.
Then there's also shared ownership, where you have a very small deposit, you buy a percentage of a home and pay rent on the rest. The idea is that over time you'll gradually buy more. So you might buy 20% of your home, eventually you'll own 60%, maybe one day you'll own the whole thing.
RESOURCES:
You can follow and connect with Vicky at:
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Book: Tenants
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