Housing in Cardiff in the middle of a crisis, says council
HOUSING in Cardiff is in the “middle of a crisis”, according to a sombre warning by the city’s council.
It comes as latest figures show house prices in the capital grew twice as fast as wages in the past 15 years, with the average home now costing more than £235,000.
About 8,000 people are currently on the waiting-list for social housing in Cardiff, and demand is increasing.
A major council house-building programme is under way in the city, with Cardiff council planning to build 4,000 homes over the next few years.
But the latest data on house prices and wages show that for many, owning your own home is an increasingly expensive challenge.
New data revealing the scale of the housing crisis in Cardiff was published as part of the council’s local development plan annual monitoring report.
According to that report, average annual wages in Cardiff in 2006 were £22,994, compared to £28,267 this year. While that’s an increase of 22.9% in cash terms, wages have actually decreased by 16.9% in real terms, when adjusting for inflation.
Meanwhile, the average house price in the city in 2006 was £154,183, compared to £235,054 this year. That’s an increase of 52.5%, almost double the amount wages have grown.
In a recent thread on Twitter, Cardiff council said “we’re in the middle of a crisis”. It added: “If that sounds serious, it’s because it is. Housing is in short supply in Cardiff.”
It wrote: “In fact, the Local Housing Market Assessment identified that at least 2,024 new homes are required per year, just to meet current demand.
“And we all know what happens when something is in short supply. Prices go up.
“And that’s what happened to house prices, as seen in this graph from the UK House Price Index, showing annual house price changes in Wales.
“And according to figures from the Office for National Statistics, so has the cost of renting... and high prices, coupled with landlords leaving the market, all adds up to more people struggling to keep a roof over their head.”
About 8,000 people are currently on the council’s housing waiting-list, and each month another 400 people apply for housing.
But only 1,600 council and housing association homes become available each year, leaving many waiting for a long time.
Council bosses said they were working on a “huge and historic” house-building programme of 4,000 homes. Six hundred have already been built since 2019. More than half of the homes will be available as social rents directly from the council, with the rest sold on the market at “affordable prices” or sold via a shared-equity assisted home-ownership scheme.
Current projects include building 500 homes at the Gasworks near Ikea in Grangetown, building 250 to 300 homes at the Channel View estate in
Grangetown, and community living schemes in Bute Street and in Riverside and Canton.
The council said on Twitter: “If we don’t increase the supply of homes, the current housing crisis will get worse and worse. And directly or indirectly, that will affect all of us.”
The latest figures in the annual monitoring report were “positive” according to Caro Wild, the council’s cabinet member for strategic planning and transport, who said thousands of new jobs had been created in the past five years.
He added targets for affordable housing were also being met, in large part due to controversial building on farmland on the city’s outskirts.