Earlier this week, the Resolution Foundation released a report entitled Heritage and Home: Investigating ethnic inequalities in housing affordability. For anyone who has taken any interest in the ongoing housing crisis in the UK, it made for depressing reading. The report shows that despite paying more on accommodation than their white British counterparts, ethnic minorities still experience lower quality housing. It suggests that one reason for this is the fact that ‘White British adults are more than twice as likely to live in a household that owns their home (outright or mortgaged) than those of Black African or Arab heritage.
Rented accommodation tends to be in poorer condition and more expensive per square metre, impacting renters’ ability to save up for a deposit to own their own home. The leasehold system is yet another obstacle for minority homebuyers, as they are much more likely to live in cities than their white counterparts, where the majority of leasehold properties are located.
The Resolution Foundation event to launch their report included the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee Florence Eshalomi MP as well as renown social issues campaigner Kwajo Tweneboa. Both spoke about their experiences of growing up in insecure housing and the need for radical reform alongside the building of more homes.
Eshalomi has been at the forefront of Labour’s campaign to address the housing crisis and has been a leading advocate of the Renters’ Rights Bill which recently had its second reading in the House of Lords. She has also been a key supporter of Keir Starmer’s plans to get Britain building, calling on councils to be given mandatory targets for house building. Yet whilst the Renters’ Rights Bill and building new homes will offer some short term relief to renters, Eshalomi was clear that a more radical approach is required: namely, to scrap the UK’s archaic leasehold system.
Remarkably, leaseholding in the UK has its roots in the medieval period, prompting its many critics to justifiably denounce it as a feudal system. Indeed, England and Wales are the only countries in Europe which still use leaseholds, a form of homeownership which results in increased costs for the more than 5 million people party to them. Despite cross-party support for reform, few major changes have been made to leasehold legislation since the 1920s. Yet in the last decade, the cost of ground rents and property management fees have risen dramatically, forcing a growing number of people to sell their homes.
If Keir Starmer is serious about removing obstacles to homeownership in the UK, then the outdated leasehold system must be part of the solution. Without it, Britain’s housing crisis is not going to be resolved anytime soon.
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