Holidays and second homes

On Wednesday, I was in Scotland at a Housing Conference (report coming up), and serendipitously bumped in to Wendy Dearden, of the Bevan Foundation (we both tried to access the venue from the wrong door).  I enjoy meeting people whose work I have blogged, and Wendy was delightful, of course.

During the event, I was reading her co-authored report with Daisy Corne about the issue of second homes and holiday lets: Holidays or homes? The loss of homes for the people of Wales to holiday accommodation.  I have to admit I used to consider this issue of marginal interest, until some recent events in my life when I came to realise that there is a whole sub-culture of short term letting through AirBnB and outside that regime (when short term landlords can get greater profits).  It reminds me of when I was 18 and looking for somewhere to live, coming up against the “holiday let” in South West London.  There are reasons for this kind of sub-culture emerging, generally relating to the perception of regulation and how to avoid it.  It’s certainly not for me to moralise about this activity (and I don’t).

However, the report begins with this arresting comment:

“Many homeless households in Wales are living for long periods of time in bed and breakfast and hotel accommodation meant for holidays, causing harm and trauma particularly for the children and families involved. Meanwhile, dwellings intended as permanent homes are being used for holidays, either as commercially run holiday lets, privately used second homes or a combination of both.”

It goes on to estimate the numbers of second homes and holiday lets, which is a bit of a superhuman task in its ow right, but it does produce more arresting comments:

“The Bevan Foundation estimates that there are between 21,300 and 25,300 dwellings which could provide permanent homes in Wales but are currently being used for holidays.”

The authors note that the lower number would be enough to accommodate all households in temporary accommodation.  Now, granted that the areas and types of accommodation might not correlate with the needs of households in TA, but this is still pretty arresting.

The authors make a number of really important comments about the economic tools used to deal with this issue – we should increase land value tax for homes taken out of the stock in this way; we should ringfence the additional money gained through council tax for use for the housing stock; and we should remove the legal uncertainty caused by the Art 4 direction debacle in Gwynedd (about which I blogged a while ago).  The latter has caused others to be wary but the issues that Gwynedd faced can surely be dealt with going forward, and there are some easy fixes that a government could make (as the authors outline).

All-in-all, this report makes for sobering reading.  Come to their seminar launch next Wednesday at 1pm (before coming on to our Masterclasses 😊).