‘The housing crisis with its lack of truly affordable homes has wide and some surprising implications that touch all our lives’.

The Member of Parliament for Dagenham and Rainham-Margaret Mullane, shares her regular column with the Havering Daily.

Being able to afford a home in which you feel secure and comfortable is something many of us take for granted because we are already happily in that position. If only that was so for everyone in Dagenham and Rainham and across England; unfortunately it is not the case for for far too many people and that situation has worsened over the past decade and more.

Without question the largest number, most heartbreaking and most difficult of the over 4,000 requests for help I have received since being elected last July are housing related. If you need any confirmation of just how drastic matters have reached you only need to see for Havering and Barking and Dagenham Councils the numbers of local families who after becoming homeless are now in temporary accommodation. The financial cost of this is one of the main factors pushing Havering close to the brink of collapse and contributes to the Council Tax rise.

In England today there are over 350,000 people in temporary accommodation, that includes 164,000 children. That would be bad enough, but recent research shows, unsurprisingly, that children who have been in temporary accommodation get lower grades in their GCSEs than their classmates, potentially blighting their futures.

The housing crisis with its lack of truly affordable homes has wide and some surprising implications that touch all our lives. Teacher unions, Royal College of Nursing, police, firefighters and many other key workers testify to the housing crisis asorganisations try to recruit staff to these essential services in London and surrounding areas. It’s not much use advertising jobs in your school or at the hospital if the person offered the teacher or nurse post can’t afford to buy or even rent privately anywhere within travelling distance to the school or hospital.

This is the mess we have all been left in as a result of disastrous housing policies of recent years and it really does affect us all. The answer is to build more new homes, but they must be really affordable for local people in modestly paid jobs and that means many more council built homes at social rent levels. It also means making sure that alongside the new homes must come the essential GP surgeries, school places and access to public transport services. As well as building homes we have to create communities for families.

And for those people, comfortably housed who might say ‘what’s this got to do with me’ I say what about your children and grandchildren and by the way, when the police or schools or hospitals or fire brigade can’t recruit staff because of the unaffordable costs of housing, that might concern you.

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