 Here's three ways in which the UK housing sector is completely and utterly fucked. 1. Home ownership Do you ever get the feeling that life just isn't as fair as it used to be? 20 years ago, 65% of 25-34 year olds on middle incomes owned their own home. Today, it's just 27% and falling. Mean house prices, as in average rather than unkind, are 152% higher than they were in the mid-1990s adjusting for inflation. The consequence? The average house price for a young person today is around eight times their household income, compared to four times 20 years ago. And with up to half-out incomes going straight on rent, it's going to take millennials an average of 19 years to save for a deposit to buy a house, compared to an average of three years back in the 1980s. In comparison, one in six baby boomers owns a second home, meaning that not only is there a generational concentration of wealth, but the buy-to-let market means that the paid packets of the young are lining the pockets of wealthy older people. Which is kind of fucked when you think about it. 2. Housing benefits I've got a doozy for you. Who do you reckon is a bigger drain on the state? Unemployed people or enterprising property-owning private landlords? Wrong, it's landlords. Just 1% of UK government welfare spending goes towards unemployment entitlements, but 10% of welfare spending goes on housing benefits, which are now part of the universal credit system. 4.2 million people claim housing benefit, which is more than any other kind of benefit. Last year, an estimated £21.9 billion was spent on making sure that people in the UK could keep a roof over their heads by supplementing their rent either in part or in full. This year, it's predicted that over £10 billion of the housing benefits spend will be going towards supplementing rents of tenants in the private sector. So that's over £10 billion of taxpayer-dash feathering the nests of private landlords instead of being spent increasing the supply of actually affordable housing. Because that's the real issue. Housing benefit doesn't cover rents in 95% of the country, and the gap between welfare support and costs is more than £100 a month in England and more than £900 in central London. This means that thousands of families are either forced to cover the shortfall between rent and income through increasing personal debt or are pushed into homelessness, which then puts them at the mercy of three, the temporary accommodation industry, also known as the Chokey of the UK housing sector. In the last five years, the combination of benefits cuts, soaring rents and a nationwide cost of living crisis has led to a massive increase in the number of people declared statutory homeless. According to the House of Commons Library, there's been a 77% increase in the number of households placed in temporary accommodation since 2010, when the Lib Dem Tory coalition came into power and ruined the lives of basically everyone who wasn't a millionaire. The latest data shows that over 125,000 children are currently in temporary or emergency housing. Between 2018 and 2019, £1.1 billion was spent on B&Bs, hostels and other temporary shelter. 30% of the total was spent on emergency B&Bs, despite there being a near universal consensus that these are the worst form of accommodation for children and families. Council spending on emergency B&Bs has gone up by 147% in recent years, while the number of actual units has increased by only 32%. So, in short, the homelessness crisis has created the perfect conditions for unscrupulous landlords to spike their prices, with the taxpayer footing the bill. More than 27,500 people are living in so-called exempt accommodation, meaning that therefore rent is being paid by the taxpayer, but there aren't any safeguards for standards or safety governing replacement. Exempt accommodation is often used to house people who are extremely vulnerable or have complex needs, domestic violence survivors, the long-term homeless and people with substance misuse issues. In a report released just this month, one resident said, It was dirty, filthy, rats and all sorts, really dangerous. Never saw a staff member again after I got the keys. I stayed for about 10 days, then slept on a park bench for two. I was sexually assaulted in that park and I was terrified, confused, a lot. Treating emergency and temporary accommodation as a commodity has created incentives for the private sector to bleed the public purse dry, and people aren't even getting decent shelter out of it. People need housing to live, just like we need food to eat and air to breathe. Shelter is a human right. It should be a social entitlement, not a private provision.