You are here: / Northern Housing Monitor

The Northern Housing Monitor 2024 KEYNOTE CHAPTER: Housing Poverty in the North – an old challenge with a new look

The Northern Housing Monitor is an analysis of Northern housing data creating a ‘State of the Region’ report highlighting emerging trends and identifying the developments which have the most significant impacts on people, homes and neighbourhoods in the North.

This keynote chapter focuses on housing poverty. It has found that 3.6 million people in the North – 23% of the Northern population, and 32% of children – are pushed into poverty after paying their housing costs.

The situation is made worse by higher than average numbers of people in the lowest income bracket living in the private rented sector (PRS). The PRS is the tenure with the highest weekly costs and the worst quality homes, with 24% of privately rented homes in the North not meeting decent homes standards.

Download the Keynote Chapter here.

Tracy Harrison, Chief Executive of the Northern Housing Consortium, said:

“The impact on the mental and physical health of those affected cannot be underestimated. This situation is the result of successive governments’ housing policies, and we are calling on the Government to work together with the housing sector to put things right.

“We’ve been pleased to see the new government is prioritising housing, but more needs to be done. It is vital that action is taken to make sure that everyone in the North has access to a good quality, safe home. This means building more social housing, injecting funding, and regulating to improve the quality of all rented homes.

“The recent decision to freeze Local Housing Allowance must also be reversed to avoid pushing more people on low incomes in privately rented homes into poverty and making things worse for those who are already struggling.”

Becky and Jade share how they were affected by issues raised in the report. Becky was unable to find a suitable home which she could afford in the private rented sector. Jade and her family’s mental and physical health suffered when they lived in a private rented home with numerous problems which her landlord failed to fix.

The Northern Housing Databank

The Databank is an interactive geographic look-up tool. This tool provides local authority-based look up reports as well as regional information. This will enable NHC members to search on individual local authorities and instantly obtain a standard report.

For NHC members logging onto our member-only ‘MyNHC’ portal, this will provide a further level of local analysis.

For more information and to access your local data click here.

Previous edition of the Northern Housing Monitor