Where do the houses go?

The phrase “housing crisis” has become the default way we approach housing these days, and not just in Bristol. The Bristol Post even have a ‘housing crisis’ news tag, which you can scroll through at your leisure.

The Bristol City Council housing waiting list is over 16,000, according to the current administration, and targets have been set against housing. These would have led to 2000 homes a year, 800 affordable in their first administration if they’d been met (they weren’t).

The new targets for the second Labour term are for 1000 affordable homes a year. The implication in these targets is that with more [affordable] housing, fewer people will be on the waiting list, and this will reduce the ‘crisis.

But what is an affordable house? For one, it includes housing that is clearly unaffordable; e.g. housing sold at 20% below market rate or shared ownership.

But it’s clear the mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, finds housing important. It can also be seen by the constant reference to it whenever he’s mentioned and at the speeches he makes.

In a promotion for the 2022 forum of mayors event to be held by UNECE in April, Rees’ bio includes that he’d “overseen the building of almost 7000 homes”. This is 2000 fewer homes he claimed for in May 2021, pre-election, and compared to his biography on the council…