We must help the young to buy their home

If you are under 35, it’s likely there is little chance of you ever owning your own home. No doubt you are also fed up of living in overpriced rented accommodation, often of a standard that can best be described as a dump.

Young people in Britain have got used to substandard accommodation, particularly in relatively prosperous and growing areas. Meanwhile, older people are doing nicely; more people in England now own their home outright than have a mortgage. It’s an ingrained unfairness in the system and the indications are that young people are thoroughly sick of it and prepared to take action.

Organisations such as London YIMBYS (Yes In My Back Yard) are multiplying in cities with acute housing need across the UK. The movement started in the US, in places such as San Francisco, where there is also an affordability crisis and a failure by politicians to tackle it. In San Francisco, the movement is now dominated by clever young people on a mission to embed a more practical and inclusive approach to delivering decent housing.

Young professionals have had enough of waiting for politics to catch up with their daily life. They are instead becoming active in campaigning and elections but, crucially, outside of party politics. A whole new generation of grass-roots activists is a real danger to any government, particularly when their parents and grandparents are equally mortified by the systemic unfairness of the housing market.

Identifying the problem is easy, but is there a solution? Yes, a radical and deliverable offer is required from the Government; enabling under-35s and first-time buyers an opportunity to buy housing at cost price. By doing this, the Government can begin to tackle inter-generational inequality.

A public service mutual, owned by its employees and incorporating young professionals who care deeply about this issue, should be set up and given powers to acquire sufficient land to build and also bust through the local and national planning blockades. Let’s call it Homes for Young People (HYP). Its structure is important, as it would need to be arms-length from the Government to help ensure innovation, but also answerable to it for powers and money invested in it.

First, the Government must ensure there’s enough land for it to build on. Publicly owned land is being made available for building homes, but it is insufficient. To make a difference the Government needs to help access sites that are currently land-banked – by supermarket chains, for example. Land in areas of growth and high housing need cannot simply be held, waiting for a right time at some future undetermined date to develop it. After a reasonable period of a few years, if land is not being built on, it should be available for compulsory purchase at the original purchase price. This would concentrate the mind of the developer.

Secondly, objections by or through local planning authorities need to be time-limited. If the land is already designated for any form of development, objections should not be allowed to happen indefinitely. For anything other than green-belt land, delays should not be permitted beyond a year. The onus should be on local communities working towards FOLLOW Rob Wilson on Twitter @Robwilson_ RDG;

READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion solutions for housing, not simply opposition to it.

Finally, HYP would require substantial investment. The Treasury should fund it initially to the tune of £2 billion, with the proviso that it should receive further match-funding, bringing a total of £4 billion to build up to 40,000 new homes by 2020/21

– a figure to be in addition to current targets. The relatively untapped social investment market would fill the funding gap. As the houses are sold, the money would be reinvested through HYP to fund the next development and so on year after year.

If for nothing other than purely selfish reasons, the Conservative Party should be focusing on housing. The more home-owners there are, the more likely it is that Conservative governments will get elected.

Rather than see the young in open revolt, new high-quality cost-price starter homes that shift wealth across the generations would help to solve at least one major part of the housing crisis. The benefit to the party or politician that makes these reforms could be a lengthy stay in power – raised up on the aspirations and gratitude of the young and their parents.

Rob Wilson was MP for Reading East