UK housing crisis in breach of UN human rights: Charities

The United Kingdom is violating its own UN human rights commitment to provide people with adequate homes, as the country struggles with a housing crisis, a group of British charities says.

The consortium of leading housing charities, called Just Fair, made the comments in a report published by British daily The Guardian on Tuesday.

The charities, including Crisis, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Save the Children and UNICEF UK, cited the country’s soaring housing rental costs, unhealthy conditions in homes and growing number of homelessness as a number of factors to the crisis.

“It is quite clear we are in breach of our UN obligations,” said the report’s author, Dr Jessie Hohmann. The group noted that “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living … including housing” only can be reduced in exceptional cases such as natural disaster and war.

The report also warned that the UK faces “profound issues of lack of supply, increasing housing costs, lack of security of tenure and homes of such poor quality that they are unfit for habitation.”

The findings showed that private rents across Britain are currently double the level of council properties, at £163 (USD 248) a week, forcing a quarter of those renting to rely on housing benefit to meet the cost. In addition, a third of homes rented in the private sector do not meet basic standards of health, safety and habitability.

Furthermore, nearly 62,000 households in England were living in temporary accommodation in December 2014 and 280,000 were at risk of homelessness.

The charities concluded that the “exceptionally high” levels of rising homelessness and the increasing number of households at risk of homelessness represent “a serious failing in the government’s obligations.”

“It is possible to take policy steps to protect the most vulnerable and marginalized, but the UK government has decided not to do that,” said Hohmann.

The report also condemned Prime Minister David Cameron’s Tory-led Coalition regarding its housing policy, saying, “Problems in realizing the right to housing are linked to a political climate of austerity, and attendant cuts to state social security and other benefits,” adding that one of the most serious issues is the failure to build enough new homes.

Conservative housing minister, Brandon Lewis, responded to the report, stating, “We inherited a broken housing market after Labour’s housing crash.” 

Emma Reynolds of the Labour party dismissed Lewis’ claim, saying, “Under David Cameron, housebuilding is at its lowest levels in peacetime since the 1920s, there is a severe lack of affordable homes, families face growing insecurity in the private rented sector, and there has been a dramatic rise in homelessness and rough sleeping.”

The Just Fair report is intended to inform an upcoming UN audit in England, set to be launched this fall.

CAH/GHN/HMV

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