It is time to act on the silent scandal of nearly 4 million dangerous homes

Home, sweet home. Home is where the heart is. No place like home. Home from home.

When we were brainstorming ideas for our new Safe Homes Now campaign, we weren’t short of sayings to work from.

So many phrases that make the point home is the one place of safety and security you can always turn to.

And yet for an alarming proportion of the population, this is not the case. Home is the place that makes you ill. Home is the place that could kill you.
Currently 8 million people live in 3.7 million dangerous homes that are cold, in need of repair or have serious hazards.

This comes at a personal cost to the residents living in sub-standard housing but it also comes at a colossal cost to our stretched NHS services.

And the problem is getting worse. For the first time since 2016, the number of non-decent owner occupied homes has risen.

In polling we commissioned for the launch of the Safe Homes Now campaign, more than half of people (54%) said it had become more difficult to keep their home warm over the past two years, two in five (39%) said that it has become more difficult to keep their home in a good state of repair and one in four (25%) said that is has become more difficult to keep their home free from hazards and defects.

It has become normalised that people live in homes that might be dangerously cold, in disrepair or with life-threatening hazards. It is a national scandal that is never talked about.

The phrase housing crisis is used a lot in the media and everyday conversation. But largely only in terms of affordability.

And when it comes to solutions, the number of new homes we need to build and where is the hotly debated topic.

These are important considerations, but building new homes will not come close to solving the problem. Four in five homes that will exist in 2050 have already been built.

Having good support and policies in place for home improvement is absolutely vital. And yet it is a topic almost never discussed politically. In that silence, our current political system is failing the majority of homeowners and renters.

Thousands are dying in their homes every year because they are too cold. Thousands more are dying in preventable accidents and falls. These aren’t just numbers. These are lives cut short, futures unfulfilled, cherished family and friends gone forever.

This is why the Centre for Ageing Better, alongside eight other charities including Barnardo’s, Asthma + Lung UK and Independent Age, has launched Safe Homes Now.

The new campaign is calling on government to halve over the next decade the 3.7 million dangerous homes in this country.

We believe this is achievable but only if the housing quality crisis in this country is tackled with the urgency, priority and resource that it warrants.

At the moment, housing policy is drifting with no sense of purpose how to tackle this really key issue.

In fact, resources needed to tackle the problem are dwindling. Our research has shown that more than £2 billion has been withdrawn in private sector grant support over the past decade – money that could have funded the repair of 600,000 homes.  

We have now reached an absurd position where more money is spent maintaining the Houses of Parliament than the rest of the nation’s privately-rented and owner-occupied homes combined.

We are calling for a national strategy to tackle the poor quality of the country’s homes because this issue is too big and too important to be resolved with piecemeal, ad-hoc solutions. It needs long-term thinking and planning.  

And we believe people need greater access to reliable information and support to maintain their homes.

Our campaign polling has revealed that among people requiring home repairs in the past two years who hadn’t been able to have the work done, more than half (57%) said it was because it was too expensive.  
A further one in five people (19%) could not find the right person for the job.

The Centre for Ageing Better believes the solution is the establishment of a national network of local one-stop shops called Good Home Hubs.

Good Home Hubs would offer advice on home repairs and adaptations including where to find trusted tradespeople, identifying what work needs to be done, how to finance repairs and improve energy efficiency.  

Our polling indicates more than one in two people (57%) would likely use a Good Home Hub if it was available in their area.

We believe government should pilot the Good Home Hub model in 50 areas for at least two years to see the difference it could make to people’s homes and to their lives.

Everybody has the right to their own home, sweet home. For millions, this remains an unachievable pipe dream. That has to change.

This article first appeared in Inside Housing.

To find out more about the Safe Homes Now campaign and how to get involved, contact [email protected]

Initial members of the Safe Homes Now campaign are: Centre for Ageing Better, Asthma and Lung UK, Barnardo’s, Impact on Urban Health, Independent Age, Nationwide Foundation, Race Equality Foundation, The Runnymede Trust and St John Ambulance.