Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:16 pm on 27 April 2022.
Thank you to Peredur for bringing forward this debate, because it is an exceptionally important one, particularly bearing in mind that in a number of the HMOs that we have, if you think about places such as Bangor, Aberystwyth, Swansea, Wrexham and Cardiff—those areas where there are universities—it's students who make up many of the residents of these HMOs. I want to refer you to an excellent report that the National Union of Students Wales and Shelter released around Christmas that looked at the standard of housing for students and which said that over half the students of Wales live in properties that are damp, that have mould growing in them, and so on; 65 per cent of students reported that they live in homes that had an impact on their mental health; and that a third of students had difficulties paying rent, with 60 per cent of them stating that the property that they lived in didn't meet standards and should not have attracted that level of rent. So, this draws attention to that specifically, and I would like to hear what the Deputy Minister has to say when it comes to student properties in particular.
Also, I think it's important—what Peredur said in his contribution—to mention the need to build homes to meet local demand and needs, to ensure that homes are fit for purpose, rather than what we see at the moment, which is a number of landlords trying to squeeze as many people as possible into homes for their own profit, without thinking about the needs of those individuals who then go on to suffer from things like mental ill health. So, I look forward to hearing what the Deputy Minister has to say about Government plans to ensure that homes are built to meet the community demands and needs. Thank you very much.