The Manchester Housing Crisis

There is a real crisis developing in Manchester, one that has been growing for some years and which shows no signs of resolution: decent housing for its citizens.

(Image: David Oates)

The facts

The number of households in Manchester has increased by 37,549 in the last ten years whilst there have been 24,000 new homes built in the same period, mostly apartments. In 2010, there were 16,000 households on Manchester Council’s housing register – 7,000 more than in 2001. These are Manchester Council’s statistics.

However, according to recent official government statistics, the number of households on the waiting list was actually 22,448, a much larger number amounting to no less than 11.1% of total households in the city.

Whatever number ones takes, it is clear that in the last decade there has been a steep rise in housing need in Manchester. Nor is this pressure likely to diminish. The Council estimates that there will be another 56,000 households in Manchester in twenty years times. This is the crisis.

The scandal

At the moment, the Council is building just 200 new council homes in Charlestown, Blackley and West Gorton whilst in the last two years only 255 empty houses have been brought back into use. Meanwhile, in December 2009, there were 13,760 empty homes across all tenures in Manchester, 8040 of these had been empty for more than 6 months.

The expectation is that this number will increase given the number of new private blocks completed but unsold. In addition, Manchester is littered with uncompleted apartment blocks, effectively abandoned by their developers in the wake of the banking crisis and consequent recession. As the Council itself states they have “a number of tools and legal powers to tackle empty homes” but they fail to use them. As noted above, 255 empty houses have been brought back into use in two years. So, that will clear the current waiting list by 2187 at present rates.

It is clear that the rapid increase in housing waiting lists in Manchester coincides with a housing price boom which has led to many households desperate for decent homes being simply priced out of the market. The Council still believes that “home ownership is achievable for households on an average city income” whilst at the same time knowing that “the average wage of city residents in 2009 was £371pw” that is below £20,000 per annum.

According to the Index of Multiple Deprivation, a national statistic which is an accepted measure for household deprivation, 228,235 of Manchester residents live in the worst 10% most deprived neighbourhoods nationally – 51,155 within worst 1%. The Index suggests that some 62% of our households live in the worst 10% in terms of deprivation.

Hulme falls comfortably inside the list of the 1% most deprived wards in the country. To suggest that the ‘average’ Hulme household can afford to buy a home at current prices is simply offensive.

Manchester City Council Responses

So what does Manchester City Council suggest should be done? Their full list of solutions

• Using our land and assets to work with private sector and institutional investors to meet demand for new homes
• Supporting developers to overcome barriers to building new homes
• Looking for solutions that do not depend on public subsidy
• Tackling the unsustainable use of energy in our housing
• Finding new solutions for those who wish to become home owners

(Source: Building Manchester's neighbourhoods: Housing strategy 2011 to 2021)

It would be difficult to devise a weaker response to the crisis.

Manchester Council has become reliant on the private sector for answering Manchester’s housing problems. No one doubts that there have been difficulties in financing social housing development, but Manchester’s Labour council has been extreme in its response.

Once, the Labour-led Council was a beacon for providing decent social housing but in recent years it has abandoned this, trying to outsource its housing department and wherever possible simply ditch its social housing responsibilities.

The Green View

The Hulme Green Party believes in a Green New Deal for social housing. It believes that building new houses would not only provide decent homes for Hulme families but would also provide work for unemployed construction workers and help lift the region out of recession.

It believes that the existence of empty homes alongside tens of thousands of families on a housing waiting list is immoral particularly when the Council possess the legal power to take over empty property vacant for a long time.

It believes that the Council should takeover and complete abandoned apartment blocks. When quizzed about their failure to do this, one councillor replied that such apartments did not fit the housing needs of most people on the waiting list. It would be interesting to see just how many of these applicants would turn down a two-bedroom apartment in a new block as ‘unsuitable’.

We challenge our Labour councillors to come up with proposals for solving Hulme’s housing crisis with similar positive proposals.

Or would they respond with the vague clichés which characterise Labour’s housing ‘policy’ for Manchester.