Housing Needs: Young People

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairing of this debate, Ms Butler. I have the honour to represent an inner London constituency, in which approximately a third of the population live in private rented accommodation. Among young people, that proportion is considerably higher because of the problems they have with access to social housing of any sort, which force them into the private rented sector or into sharing properties.

The stress they suffer is enormous, the overcrowding that happens in shared flats is horrendous and the way young people have to club together to try to pay rent, which for even a two or three-bedroom flat would be at least £2,000 a month in the private rented sector in my constituency, means they have no possibility of saving money for anything else. Their whole life revolves around work, trying to pay the rent and the other costs that go with it.

Their ability to access council or housing association accommodation is extremely limited, because there is an enormous waiting list with a terrible stress level and shortage of housing. Essentially, to be allocated council housing, a person must have quite profound special needs. I see the Minister nodding; he understands very well that this is an issue all across London. Communities are increasingly broken up because of the lack of access to anything that one could begin to call affordable housing.

There are a number of things that we could do about that. First, we could increase the levels of control over the private rented sector, something I have raised before with the Minister. I support the Renters’ Rights Act 2025—it is a big step forward, because it gives more security and power to the tenant vis-à-vis the landlord. However—and this is the big problem, particularly for London, the south-east and every other big city—the lack of rent control means that places become increasingly unaffordable, forcing young people out of these areas altogether. I hope, as a result of this debate, that the Government can give us some hope that they will be able to do something about young people’s housing, particularly in inner-urban areas.

There is also the issue of the administration of housing associations. I was a councillor before I became an MP, and I remember when housing associations were thought to be the panacea for all ills. In the 1970s, they were promoted as a wonderful thing: co-operatively and locally run, responsive to tenants needs, and the other things that we would always want.

These days, it is not even a little bit like that; we have enormous housing associations, owning thousands of properties across a very wide part of the country and the cities. There is very little response to tenants’ needs and, frankly, they are well out of touch. I spend a great deal of time representing the needs of tenants, particularly those of housing associations Peabody and Clarion Housing.

However, the housing associations have in many cases leased properties to special needs housing groups. That is often quite a good thing; for example, the Peter Bedford Trust, in my area, is a very good organisation that has done a great deal of work to help mainly, but not exclusively, young people with very profound and special needs. Sadly, a couple of weeks ago I learned that Clarion Housing Association is taking back a large number of its properties, leaving a large number of young, and middle-aged, people stressed and needing to find somewhere else to go. I hope the Minister can give us some indication of the Government’s thoughts on the democracy and accountability of the very large housing associations in particular, because there is a growing feeling of alienation from them.

Evictions are happening in the private rented sector because of the implementation of section 21 no-fault evictions. I am delighted that such no-fault evictions will end when the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 finally comes into effect; that is a huge step forward. My deep regret is that they did not end in July 2024, because as soon as the Act and its contents were announced the landlords took advantage by implementing large numbers of no-fault evictions ahead of the time when they will not be able to. It is too late to do much about that, but I urge that there be some thoughts about that.

The last thing I will say, in the 39 seconds remaining, is this: colleagues have talked about rising up the housing ladder and, while I understand the language and its use, the reality is that as a society we tolerate too much housing stress, homelessness and housing poverty. We need a principle of housing as a right, rather than the idea that housing is all about an investment for your own future. Surely housing should be for housing needs; that should be the primary consideration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

The hon. Gentleman has made that point before, and he knows that I am well aware of the issue. We continue to keep under review measures relating to taxation, as well as looking at, as he knows, the additional powers that we might give local authorities to help them deal with particularly acute concentrations of both short-term lets and second homes. As I say, we have had this debate over many months on both the pros and cons of licensing regimes and planning control powers in that regard. It is an issue that we keep under close review.

We also have a number of Government-backed offers to directly help first-time buyers. That obviously includes shared ownership, which we continue to support while improving the model to strengthen long-term affordability, transparency and fairness for buyers. The lifetime ISA continues to be available to help aspiring buyers save towards a deposit, and the Treasury will shortly consult on a new first-time buyer product to replace the lifetime ISA and remove the need for a withdrawal charge.

As a result of all those measures, we have begun to see early improvements. First-time buyer mortgage numbers increased to over 329,000 in 2024, a 16% increase on the previous year.

As I have said, we are clear-eyed about the pressures arising in the mortgage market from instability in the middle east. Our assessment is that mortgage availability remains strong. Conditions are not comparable to late 2022, and first-time buyers should still be able to get on the housing ladder, particularly with support from brokers to find competitive options. However, uncertainty about interest rates may slow the improvement that we have been seeing in first-time buyer numbers, and we will continue to monitor the situation closely.

I should briefly turn to the home buying and selling process, because helping young people into home ownership is not only about raising a deposit or securing a mortgage. Transactions currently take nearly five months to complete on average, and around one in three falls through, leaving first-time buyers out of pocket and too often back at square one. That is why we are committed to reforming the process to make it quicker, cheaper and more transparent. As hon. Members are aware, we consulted on a package of reforms to do that, including ensuring that key information is available up front before an offer is made, improving the quality and accountability of property professionals, and introducing binding contracts to reduce the wasted costs and heartache that come when a transaction collapses.

I want to touch briefly on other areas of focus, because supply is not the only thing we have focused on. As hon. Members have said, we are on the verge of transforming the private rented sector through the implementation of our Renters’ Rights Act. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned when that Act “finally comes into effect”, and he does not have long to wait. From 1 May, the first phase of our reforms will give renters greater stability and security, stronger protections against unreasonable rent increases and an end to exploitative practices such as rental bidding wars and excessive demands for rent in advance.

We are also progressing the reforms necessary to bring the feudal leasehold system to an end, so that the dream of home ownership is made real for millions of young leasehold homeowners across the country. Again, I say to the Liberal Democrat spokesman that I would love to know what he means by “abolition”. Is it now the position of the Liberal Democrats that they would end approximately 5 million leases overnight and do what established commonhold associations across the country fear? The Liberal Democrats have to explain what they mean, rather than just throwing out terminology that does not correspond to a really difficult and challenging transition, which we are overseeing, away from the broken leasehold system and towards that commonhold future. We are progressing those reforms, switching on the powers that are already on the statute book and, as the hon. Member knows, progressing our draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill.

Our overall aim is expanded housing choice and availability, and improved security and affordability across tenures.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Before the Minister sits down, could he say anything about his Department’s approach to the large housing associations? I increasingly hear stories in my area—as the Minister probably does in his—that they are selling off properties when there is a change of tenancy to give themselves a capital asset, and they are then spending it somewhere else. It ends up with a process of social cleansing in the central parts of all our big cities.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am aware of the point that the right hon. Member raises. To respond to his wider point about oversight, like all affordable providers of social housing, housing associations are held to the standards overseen by the regulator following the very welcome introduction of the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 under the previous Government. The regulator has the powers necessary to ensure that individual providers, such as the ones he mentions, are held to those regulatory standards. If he wants to follow up with some of the specific constituency cases he has mentioned, I am more than happy to respond.

This debate underlines a point that the Government accept without qualification and that I have heard from lots of hon. Members outside this Chamber: that the housing market has to work better for young people. That means: increasing supply, especially of social and affordable housing; supporting first-time buyers; fixing a home buying process that is too slow and uncertain; transforming the private rented sector so that it provides security and decency; and bringing the feudal leasehold system to an end by making commonhold the default tenure and improving the leasehold model so that existing leaseholders can more cheaply and easily enfranchise and convert to commonhold—which I hope they will do in very large numbers.