Tag Archives: housing

4 unmissable graphs of the UK’s housing bubble

From the construction and housing booms to price changes and renting versus buying, Tom Davies presents 4 charts to explain what’s happened to housing.

1    Bursting point? Another housing bubble

  •  How unaffordable can it get?  House prices in the UK continue  to increase.

Median earnings only increased by 57% from 1996 to 2012, but house prices have gone up by 157%.

Though low interest rates have kept mortgage costs relatively affordable, house prices are now more than twice as expensive relative to earnings.

2 Rent or Buy?  The difference when ownership means wealth

  • Property matters

In comparison with other European countries, property prices are a significant proportion of the wealth held by British households. In England and Wales, 69% of people own property, whilst this trend is reversed in Germany. Continue reading 4 unmissable graphs of the UK’s housing bubble

25 Twitter accounts to follow in 2014 on welfare reform – the first 10

We’ve compiled a list of 25 useful Twitter accounts if you want to follow welfare reform. In this post we reveal the first 10…

1. Joseph Rowntree Fdn.  @jrf_uk,   @Helen_Barnard

Helen Barnard is Research Programme Manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), the social research policy charity of Quaker origins.

The JRF conducts a range of research into welfare issues, and created the MIS, the Minimum Income Standard, estimating what is an adequate income based on what the public believe to be minimum living standards.

2. ResolutionFoundation @resfoundation

Living standards report Look out for the launch of their study The State of Living Standards 2014 on February 11th. Continue reading 25 Twitter accounts to follow in 2014 on welfare reform – the first 10

Useful posts to Sept 6: welfare reforms mauled;whose upturn? dreading UC

These are some welfare links we found interesting during the first week of September.

Useful links from August 1st to 15th: child households; pooling resources; youth deal.

These are some welfare links we found interesting during the first two weeks of August.

Illegal use of B&Bs to house homeless families – how to investigate your local figures (and learn some useful data techniques too)

The Guardian’s Randeep Ramesh reports today on the use of bed and breakfasts to house families beyond the legal time limit of six weeks.

The national picture is that half of the 242 authorities who responded had placed homeless families in private accommodation for more than 6 weeks since April 2010. But what’s your local picture?

A good first stop is your local authority’s expenditure above £500. To find this, try a search like ‘expenditure 500 site:bolton.gov.uk‘ – but replace the last bit with your own local authority’s website (excluding the www.).

Download it and open in Excel or Google Docs (if you need to convert it from PDF try pdftoexcelonline.com). Now it’s time to filter… Continue reading Illegal use of B&Bs to house homeless families – how to investigate your local figures (and learn some useful data techniques too)

No rough sleeping by 2012? The reality of homelessness (video)


Less than 300 days left till the opening of the London 2012 Olympic Games. The clock is ticking, but not only for the international sport event. Rough sleeping should also have its days counted – in theory.

In November 2008 the British government launched a £200m strategy to end homelssness in London by 2012, including a more “compassionate” approach towards rough sleepers. Three years on, how close are we to achieving that goal, and is there enough compassion in the way the homeless are being treated?

Kristina Khoo, a journalist with an MA in International Journalism from Brunel University, has produced an investigative documentary (video below) looking into the government’s pledge to eliminate homelessness and the scepticism surrounding it.

Her investigation gives voice to grassroots charities and rough sleepers, who are not normally included into the government’s strategy. The documentary follows the journey of Mohammad, who has been rough sleeping on London buses for the past 10 years, and reveals some of the crude tactics employed to get the homeless off the streets.

According to the latest figures from the Rough Sleeping Statistics England:

  • In autumn 2010, rough sleeping counts and estimates in England was 1,768.
  • London, the South East and the South West had the highest number of rough sleepers with 415, 310 and 270 respectively. The North East had the lowest number with 49.

If you are interested in launching an investigation about housing and homelessness issues too, or if you already have done some work on these topics, do get in touch. We are recruiting collaborators.