Shelter calls for three million homes to be built by 2040

Housing charity Shelter has outlined a plan to ‘reverse the decay of social mobility.’

The review, released today, was commissioned by Shelter in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster in June 2017 and has just been released.

The commissioners include Ed Miliband, Baroness Warsi and Edward Daffarn, a Grenfell survivor, as well as 13 others.

As part of the review, Shelter looked specifically at the South West area and found the number being built dropped by 77 percent, from 4,121 in 2009-2010 to just 942 in 2017-2018.

The most recent statistics, from January 2018, place the number of rough sleepers in Bournemouth at 48.

This number is especially shocking as there are over 100,000 households on the waiting list for social housing nationally.

Three million homes is a higher number than those built in the two decades following World War II, however as the situation with social housing has been neglected, the backlog has built.

Planned to be completed within 20 years, the plan includes 1.27 million homes for those who are homeless, living with a disability or long term illness or living in very poor conditions.

1.17 million homes for ‘trapped renters’, younger families who cannot afford to buy and face a lifetime in private renting.

The final proposal is for 690,000 homes for private renters over the age of 55, who may be struggling with post-retirement costs.