National report on housing inequalities – United Kingdom

An extract from Deliverable 2.1 “Contextualized analysis of the housing situation – Papers on (sub)national trends”

Falling government expenditure on housebuilding, rising rents and house prices, stagnating incomes, and rising living costs have significant implications for housing inequalities. As social and affordable rental housing declines, those unable to acquire a mortgage move increasingly into the private rental sector, which has grown substantially since 2007. By 2017, 40% of former council homes had moved to the private rented sector. While homeownership remains the dominant tenure and continues to rise, new entrants into owner occupation have been falling, as have rates of mortgaged home ownership, while outright home ownership has increased, benefiting older generations and wealthier cash buyers disproportionately. Inherited wealth and capital, rather than income, are key determinants of housing outcomes. Housing access and affordability in the UK cannot be understood without accounting for intergenerational wealth transfers. The UK case highlights ‘consecutive crises’ or polycrisis, which interact with underlying structural conditions to reproduce housing inequalities.