Home is where the harm is - living poor housing during lockdown

"I don't put my heating on as much as I should do. I make sure my daughter walks around in slippers, dressing gowns. You come into the home, you take your coat off and you put a dressing gown on, so you walk round in a housecoat, basically. I sit there in the winter basically in my housecoat with my slippers on, quite often with a hat on, with a blanket over me to make sure that I can keep warm, and I've taught my daughter to do the same. On the coldest, coldest nights, we basically, we climb into bed just shortly after we've had hot food and stay there in my double bed cuddled up together underneath all the blankets to keep warm."
Female, 44, lone parent, living in Greater Manchester in the private rented sector

Of all the accounts gathered during the research for the newly released report ‘Lockdown. Rundown, Breakdown’ from our team at the University of Huddersfield, this one is one of the most depressing. What is more depressing is the fact that the respondent was in full-time employment as a civil servant in a key government department. Furthermore, that she was describing what life was like in her privately rented terrace house in Spring this year. Imagine how she’s feeling looking towards the winter. Her story was not unusual.

The report is the result of research carried out with private renters and owner-occupiers across the North between May and July 2020, just months after lockdown restrictions were introduced in England to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The report sets out how issues such as disrepair, cold homes and lack of space were exacerbated during national lockdown, impacting upon residents’ physical and mental health. Residents in the private rented sector faced particular challenges, with many tenants experiencing deteriorating conditions. Fears over being seen as a problem to landlords meant some tenants didn’t report repairs, fearing eviction or rent reprisals from landlords.

Home energy costs were a major source of anxiety for residents, who told us about how they faced impossible choices, prioritising rent, heat and food in that order. The findings make it clear that the lockdown created more energy vulnerability for a wider spectrum of the population than was the case pre-pandemic. This is particularly concerning as the daily challenge of living and getting by will be made all the more difficult as winter approaches and homes get colder and people face the prospect of spending more time indoors, with increased financial and job insecurity.

In the report we are calling for urgent action this winter to mitigate some of the likely dire impacts of a combination of poor-housing, insecurity of tenure and employment, reducing state support and rising living costs.

Issues of housing quality did not begin with lockdown. Rather, households went into lockdown living in homes that were already in a poor state of repair in a sector ill equipped to respond. The stories in the report are not isolated cases – over 1 million homes across the North fail to meet basic decency standards. Such an accumulation of poor-quality housing represents a long-term failure of housing policy. Its presence implies the need for a long-term rebalancing of housing policy – at national, city-region and local levels – so that the quality of our existing homes is treated as a priority equal to the importance of the supply of new homes.

The research was funded by the Northern Housing Consortium, University of Huddersfield and the Nationwide Foundation. For more information contact Prof. Phil Brown p.a.brown@hud.ac.uk