In contrast to the desperate need for social housing, John Harris, writing in the Guardian on 19 October noted that Liverpool has luxury flats on the waterfront by the River Mersey, with lovely views over to the hills of North Wales to the west. He wrote that the luxury flats by the river “are mostly bought by investors who then rent them to local professionals.” It seems that 3 years ago, 4 out of every 10 of the early buyers were from China, Singapore or Australia.
Harris further reported that Liverpool City Council saw a 25% increase in applications (a total of 2,048) for homelessness support and had 12,764 households on a waiting list for social housing. Shockingly, he continued: ” most local authorities now lack either the means or will to build anything more than paltry amounts of new social housing, [and] the city’s ‘additional social rent dwellings’ in 2023-24 totalled – and read this slowly – five.”
Meanwhile, it was also pointed out that private rents in Liverpool had gone up by an average 9.6% in the last year.
No social housing? Blame asylum seekers
Sadly, but unsurprisingly, Harris also found evidence that asylum seekers were getting blamed for the housing crisis in Liverpool. One woman interviewed has herself recently been paying £600 per month for a dwelling she shares with her 15-year-old son and has now been issued with a no-fault eviction notice. She suspects this is because the landlord wants to bring in new tenants at £1,400 per month. She said: “I see the messages on Facebook [that] blame the asylum seekers: ‘If it wasn’t for these people coming over on the boats, you’d get your house.’ That upsets me tremendously. Cos it’s not right.”
The problems outlined by Harris, whether they are the housing issues or the racist attitude towards asylum seekers, are of course not specifically Liverpudlian problems. They demonstrate what is happening all over the country at present; there is a lack of decent social housing and migrants are getting the blame for it.
More social housing must be a social priority
The Labour government made a pledge to build 1.5 million new homes over this parliamentary term. In January, Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central and candidate for Deputy Leadership of the party, announced on her website that among the 1.5 million homes Labour plan to build across the country, money had been ringfenced to build 18 000 houses, termed as social housing. In Manchester at least 500 council homes would be built.
While these are decent plans, a few questions remain. What percentage of the new houses Labour plan to build will actually be social housing? This has not been made clear. Then what about the shortage of skilled workers needed to build the houses? It was reported in late 2024 that leaders of the building industry had cast serious doubt on there being enough workers to fulfil the pledge.
And perhaps most importantly of all: how on earth can cash-strapped councils, who are struggling to provide the most basic of services find the money to build the required council houses? One thing is certain: not only building housing, but building affordable social housing should be a priority of this government and the questions above must be resolved.
Social housing should be a political priority
And the problems around building a considerable amount of affordable, social housing must be solved quickly. As Harris makes clear in his article, the blame for the lack of social housing is being put by many squarely – and unfairly – onto asylum seekers.
With one recent opinion poll putting Labour as low as 15%, while Reform UK Ltd are over 30%, then surely it is also a political priority to get a lot of social housing built. Not just houses for sale, but houses for rent at reasonable levels.
Please excuse the pun, but increasing the amount of social housing must be a building block in any attempts to defeat Reform at the next general election. And the clock is ticking.
