Housing policy and housing crisis – Senedd Debate

“It’s entirely clear, isn’t it, that we are in a housing crisis—thousands of people waiting for social housing; families, children and young people living in temporary accommodation or facing homelessness”.

This was the comment of Sian Gwenllian in closing the debate, on 28th January 2026, on her motion on housing policy going forward – political posturing really, but helpful in that the parties set out their stall on where housing policy might go in the next Senedd term.  This was a quality debate about housing, the like of which one rarely sees (and certainly not in Westminster).  If you are a housing nerd, this is a debate worth reading due to the exceptional breadth of knowledge displayed.  So, political “posturing” is a slightly harsh verdict, but there are some clear lines being developed.  There are also some areas of apparent agreement:

• there is a housing crisis in Wales
• the crisis is one of housing conditions, and supply
• there is a temporary accommodation crisis

The Conservatives, in essence, blame the housing crisis (which they accept exists – as Joel James put it, “No-one can deny that”) on regulation and want to increase home ownership, including re-introducing the right to buy.  They accept the housing conditions problem in Wales (although they dispute some of the statistics, on a relatively rational basis), and suggest that home ownership cures that because owners tend to spend more upgrading their properties.  Something needs to be done about the workforce issues in Wales, especially as there is an ageing construction sector.

Labour and Plaid Cymru seem to agree on a few things too: there is a need for more social housing; there is a major issue about housing quality standards in Wales; fuel poverty is a significant issue which requires solution; poor quality housing is what I would call a gateway issue, ie it is the gateway to various other debates, including particularly public health and the NHS, and children’s development, and requires more holistic working/policy development.  To give an example from the debate, Mabon ap Gwynfor said:

Poor housing shortens the lives of far too many people, with cold, damp and unsafe homes continuing to drive respiratory illness, heart disease, anxiety and depression, pushing people into hospitals that they should never have been in in the first place. This leads to a direct cost of more than £95 million to our health service in Wales every year. That is money that is being spent on treating the harms that could have been prevented—not just once, but over and over again. This is the price of delayed action.

My sense is that Labour and Plaid largely agree on what should be done.  Labour are really about more of the same, and wanted to draw attention to their achievements – 20,000 more homes by November, the Homelessness etc Bill, the money they have given to retrofitting, and working with the Westminster government on warm homes.  Jayne Bryant is really hamstrung, I think – my sense is that she would like to go much further than Labour have been able to do – but has done a lot, as was evidenced by the Labour opposing motion.  They are pinning quite a lot on the Homelessness etc Bill.  As she put it, “The Bill represents a radical and lasting system change. It’s a world-leading response to a global challenge, demonstrating our commitment to deliver for the most vulnerable in our communities”.  My response is that, while I don’t disagree with that assessment (although the detail is not uninteresting – see past blogs and most recently here), it can feel a bit like moving deckchairs on the Titanic.

Plaid, though, want to go further.  There are some policies here to which they drew attention.  For me, the thing that stuck out was that they will call for rent regulation (although sometimes they call it rent “control” – these are rather different things) and the end of “no-fault evictions”.  Sian Gwenllian (who, I have to say, is one of the most knowledgeable housing people out there – slightly starstruck – and I hope that, if Plaid take power, she will be the housing secretary) nailed it when she said that

The rights of renters are more far-reaching in England by now, since the legislation was passed there, but no-fault evictions continue to exist in Wales. So, it’s an entirely unacceptable situation, where renters in Wales have fewer rights than renters in England.

She also argued that the supply of social housing goes to the heart of the housing crisis, so we know that will be the direction of travel in the next Senedd.

I didn’t see a Reform contribution, and I am curious to know what their housing policy might be.

At some point, I think we need to disaggregate what we mean by the housing “crisis” in Wales.  I’m not suggesting that there are not serious and significant issues here, but what I am suggesting is that use of the word “crisis” does quite a lot of political work.  Unless something happens over the course of the week, I will try to write that up next week.