Housing crisis grows – first fall in home movers for five years

Housing crisis grows – first fall in home movers for five years

On January 20th 2017 the BBC announced the first fall in the numbers of people moving home in the last five years. The reason was the growing housing crisis.

Last year I gave a talk in Manchester about the housing crisis and how and why I thought it was growing in importance then. Because of the location of building in which the talk was held, it began with a historical diversion: “160 years ago, that’s only your great great great grand parents’ time ago, this city of Manchester had a housing crisis.

On this exact spot – or more likely a floor below us – people were living in jerry built housing that was so bad that life expectancy fell below 25 years. The reason for this crisis was immigration. So yes immigration can cause a housing crisis; although not the one that we have at present.

In the 1840s Manchester was sucking people into its mills, many fleeing from famine in Ireland. Combine this with badly built housing and you have a housing crisis, the same kind of crisis that is happening in slums and shanty towns around the poor world now. Manchester did this first. But our current housing crisis has nothing to do with immigration”

read more from that ‘Housing Crisis’ talk;

… or listen to a recent interview that took place on BBC Radio 2:

…or see here for a book published a couple of years ago on why the crisis was coming and what could be done when it hits.