We’re in the middle of a housing crisis, at least according to the BBC and most other mainstream news outlets, typically framed in terms of rising house prices caused by our failure to build enough homes to keep up with demand.
However, if you just analyse the raw data (mainly source 2 below), you find that there’s 11.6 million spare bedrooms in the U.K. and enough dwelling floor-space for us all to live in a compact, but not overly-cramped household, IF properties were distributed equally.
It follows that there isn’t a house-building crisis, there’s a housing-distribution crisis. While there is hardly any overcrowding in England (only 3% of dwellings are classified as overcrowded), 38% of properties, or 9 MILLION properties, are classified as under-occupied, defined as houses with two more spare bedrooms. If you look at owner-occupied properties, 54% of these are under-occupied.
Calculating the number of spare bedrooms in England
- The population of England in 2017 was 55.62 million (ONS, source 1)
- The estimated housing stock in England in 2017 was 23.2 million (English Housing Survey, source 2)
- Thus, if housing was distributed equally between persons, there’d be 2.4 people in each dwelling.
- The average number of bedrooms per house in England is 2.95 (Which, source 3, and labc, source 4)
- Thus, if households were distributed equally between persons, each household would have 0.55 of a spare bedroom.
- Looked at another way, 50% of all households could have a spare bedroom.
- Looked at another way, there are 23.2 million * 50% spare bedrooms in England, which = 11.6 million spare bedrooms.
How much floor space would we each have if housing was equally distributed?
The average (mean) usable floor area of dwellings in England 2017 was 94m2 (English Housing Survey, source 2, and NB some other sources I checked out had lower figures, as low as 60 odd square meters)94/ 2.4 = 39.25 sqm of living space per person, or nearly 40 s4 meters, which, if you were a single person would allow you to live like this (pic source A)
Or, if you’re a couple, you could live like this (80 square meter design, pic source B)
Some brief thoughts and analysis:
I’ve long suspected that this ‘housing crisis’ is more a result of privatised individualism rather than lack of houses. Clearly, we don’t need more houses. There’s sufficient stock already, and if there’s too many large houses, it’s a relatively easy matter (compared to building more houses) to convert them into flats.
There are basically too many owner-occupiers, most of them over 60, sitting in houses that are too large for them, maintaining empty rooms for few occasions per year when the precious grandkids come to visit.
A simple solution would be as follows: these nine million households convert their upper floors into second dwellings, hey presto, we have nine million additional smaller properties suitable for the younger first time buyer demographic, which will be cheaper for them to purchase because of the increased supply AND the cheaper cost of converting rather than new-building, AND the olds get a nice kick-back when they sell half of their home.
Oh if only housing were that simple!
Of course this ‘using what assets we’ve got redistributive solution’ will never happen, because of privatised-individualism – the couples or singles in those nine million under-occupied households, they see those properties as assets to either be equity-released to pay for their retirement leisure activities, and/ or to be handed down to their kids so they can eventually get onto the property ladder sometime in the 2040s.
I just wish when the news reported the ‘housing crisis’ they’d point this out – we have sufficient stock, we only need to build more houses IF AND BECAUSE nine million people (the top 20%) are clinging onto their housing-asset, which is entirely rational in a market-system of course, and thus the crisis is a product of the market-system, rather than being simply about too few houses and/or too many people.
But that would be stating the truth wouldn’t it, bu then again, that’s probably never going to happen either!
Sources
- Population of England
- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/774820/2017-18_EHS_Headline_Report.pdf
- https://www.which.co.uk/news/2018/04/shrinking-homes-the-average-british-house-20-smaller-than-in-1970s/
- https://www.labc.co.uk/news/what-average-house-size-uk?language_content_entity=en
- Pic source A http://www.home-designing.com/2015/09/ultra-tiny-home-design-4-interiors-under-40-square-meters
- Pic source B http://www.home-designing.com/2-gorgeous-single-story-homes-with-80-square-meter-floor-space-includes-layoutfloor-plans