Home ownership divide is growing

PEOPLE fortunate enough to own their home were greeted by a rare bit of good news this week – house prices in Wales continue to rise.

But the ever-escalating cost of home ownership could be causing more harm than good.

As homeowners in the rest of the UK look on in horror as property prices start to fall, it is easy to welcome the Welsh market’s resilience as a sign of present and future prosperity.

But the buoyancy of the Welsh housing market is hiding a looming social crisis, which is eating away at the foundations of any hope for equality between the generations.

More than 70% of homeowners in Wales are over the age of 65.

Undeniably, this is often a hardearned comfort after a lifetime of work, and a nest egg to pass on to the next generation.

But with 44% of people aged 25-34 renting from private landlords, we need to ask if a housing market that prices young families out of a home is a sustainable one.

A report written by the National Assembly’s research service warned AMs that Wales needs to be building 15,000 homes a year, every year for the next decade and a half.

The reality is we are not even close to hitting that target.

Last year in Wales 6,900 homes were built, with almost two thirds built by private developers.

The result is ever greater competition for the number of homes available on the open market.

This is good news for owners, but it comes at the cost of the safety and security of their children and grandchildren.

Shockingly, the solution is a simple one in theory – build more houses.

Answers are rarely this clear and different ideologies will demand their own methods.

But it can’t be done under the direction of the state alone.

Nor will unleashing the forces of the free market create a solution that works.

Pragmatic proposals free of political dogma are the only way to create an affordable solution.

Rhetoric alone is not a solution, the Welsh Government’s proposal to end the “right to buy” is a sticking plaster, not a serious contribution to the debate.

You cannot solve the housing crisis by dousing people’s aspiration to own a home.

The reality of home ownership that came to one generation through a combination of hard work and diligent saving, could well become an unattainable aspiration for the next.

Today’s young people will be the first in three centuries to be worse off than their parents.

They face an intimidating cocktail of rising debt, low-skilled and low-paid work, and a housing crisis not of their making.

To many it will seem like our best days are behind us, but this generational divide is a product of political choices.

We can demand that our children live in a future where owning the roof over their head is an achievable dream rather than a taunting nightmare. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2014 was 78.5%