5. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: The Welsh Government response to the Independent Affordable Housing Supply Review

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:50 pm on 9 July 2019.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:50, 9 July 2019

I couldn't agree more. Clearly, one of the issues with homelessness is that we have a large tap, if you like, of people who are sliding into homelessness because we have an insufficient housing supply and it's a vicious circle. What we need to do is cut into that circle and make sure that the supply increases exponentially in order to cut off the number of people who slide into homelessness. To do that we have to build thousands and thousands of council houses, not hundreds—thousands. We have to build around 4,500, that's including the ones we've already built, that's the absolute number, just to stop people being in temporary accommodation. That's without touching the waiting lists or the waiting lists of people who don't bother to go on the waiting lists because they know that they've got no chance of getting there. So, we are talking about thousands and thousands, not hundreds and hundreds. So, I completely agree.

We will have a standard. I still remember my grandmother and my aunties used to talk all the time about how great it was when they first moved into their council housing in Swansea. They were very impressed by the standard then, and those houses have stood the test of time, because they're very high standard even now. We want to build houses that stand that test of time, that are still fit to be homes of the future some 80 or 90 years later on. Absolutely, those houses have been retrofitted for higher insulation standards and so on, but, basically, the house is a sound house, so it's capable of being improved in that way. That's what we must build for the future; I couldn't agree more. 

There is a big issue around whether we need to interfere in the market for investor houses. I'm very seriously looking at what we can do to allow local authorities in Wales to buy houses in that market themselves for social rent, where it's obvious that there's a large PRS, private rented sector, developing. Mike Hedges will know that in my own constituency, right in the middle of it, I have a very large swathe of houses that have done exactly what he said. So, I'm very keen on that. I just want to emphasise at this point that the Deputy Minister, Hannah Blythyn, has been looking very hard at the houses into homes grants and the regeneration of empty properties in particular, around what we can do to bring some of those back into beneficial use. But the market is dysfunctional in some areas, and we do need to look at ways that we can interfere in that; I completely agree with him.