And Bolton at Home chief executive Jon Lord has said thousands of people will never get off waiting lists — unless new homes are built.
The waiting list for social housing has doubled since 1998, when it was about 6,000. Mr Lord says the economic downturn and the Government’s tightening of planning laws means there are now about 20,000 people on the waiting list in Bolton, with about 12,000 of those “active”, meaning they are in urgent need of new or more suitable homes.
The housing boss, who took over Bolton at Home in April, 2010, said while on-street homelessness is relatively low in Bolton, an increasing number of people are in danger of living in severely overcrowded conditions. That has a knock-on effect on health, education and employment.
Bolton At Home has 18,040 houses, of which 323 are empty as they are undergoing repairs or being made ready to let.
Mr Lord said: “The issue for us is our capacity to get more properties that can ‘eat’ into that waiting list— at the moment we could never clear that list.”
The waiting lists could grow even longer as economic pressures lead to more people losing their jobs and struggling to pay mortgages.
Comparing the situation now to the period when waiting lists were at their lowest, Mr Lord said: “We used to have to go out and advertise properties in the 1990s. Now we are regularly getting 50 to 100 expressions of interest for properties which would have been considered less attractive back then.”
He added that a new trend was emerging, where people chose to move out of their homes and return to living with family.
Mr Lord stressed the impact unsuitable housing can have on young people’s educations and said the key to improving the prospects for people trapped in unsuitable houses is to find them “a home rather than just a roof”.
“We are dealing with people’s lives and it’s the people side of it where you see the successes and the tragedies,” he said.
Bolton At Home is examining ways of dealing with the housing deficit. These include buying back council houses which were sold under the right-to-buy scheme, expanding its private- sector leasing scheme and building new houses, although this option is limited by planning laws.
Bosses are also supporting Bolton Council schemes which offer people advice on mortgages, debt prevention and money skills.
But Mr Lord says that change needs to happen at a national level if the crisis is to be averted.
He added: “We seem to be stuck with some very traditional ways of funding things. At the moment, people are putting sticking plasters on, rather than looking for a lasting solution.”
“I don’t think any government has got it right in years. Doing an all-party national housing policy should be relatively straightforward, but no one has ever done it.”
In February, 17 new council homes were built in Heywood Street, Little Lever, at a cost of £1.8 million.
On a national level, home ownership is set to slump over the next decade to levels not seen since the 1980s.
According to a forecast by the National Housing Federation, it will fall to just 63.8 per cent over the next 10 years.
The average house price in England will rise by 21.3 per cent over the next five years, from £214,647 in 2011 to £260,304 in 2016, according to Oxford Economics, who were commissioned to produce the forecasts.
The federation said that in the 2010/11 financial year, 105,000 homes were built in England — the lowest level since the 1920s.
The situation to this problem is very simple. Stop flooding our town with immigrants, and there will be enough houses to go round for the people of Bolton.
