Affordability is the biggest untapped opportunity to build public support for new homes
Jack Airey
New Public First research finds affordability is by far the biggest perceived benefit of housebuilding. Nearly half (46%) rank making local housing more affordable as the main potential advantage of new homes, far ahead of jobs, energy efficiency or support for local businesses.
But the case is not yet being made credibly enough that housebuilding will ease pressure on housing costs. While 53% of people want house prices and rents in their local area to fall, people are more likely to think increasing housebuilding locally would increase prices than reduce them, by 28% to 19%.
This “affordability belief gap” helps explain why housebuilding so often runs into political resistance. When most people do not believe development will improve affordability locally, consultations become more adversarial, councillors become more cautious, and schemes become slower and harder to deliver.
Yet these attitudes are not deeply entrenched, and support for development increases when people believe new homes will improve affordability for local people. Our research shows the strongest opportunity is making a clearer and more locally grounded case that new homes ease pressures on housing costs for people like them.
The most effective messages are visible, local and tangible:
- Helping young people and families stay in the area
- Supporting first-time buyers
- Creating jobs and apprenticeships locally
Economic arguments about supply and competition can work too, particularly with people already supportive of development, but they are more divisive among opponents when presented in abstract terms.
The messages most effective at softening opposition are those rooted in local benefit, fairness and visible community outcomes.
For those wanting to deliver more homes, affordability needs to be central to the argument, not at its margins.
This research was kindly supported by to Barratt Redrow, Richborough, Urban Sketch, Persimmon Homes, Shared Voice and the Land, Planning and Development Federation.
Read the report here.