- Charities, government and investors raise concerns
- Market created by lack of affordable social housing
There are more homeless people in the UK than there are people in Plymouth. According to the latest analysis from homeless charity Shelter, 274,000 people – or around 0.41 per cent of the entire UK population – are homeless, compared with 264,700 residents of Devon’s largest city. When Shelter compiled those figures at the end of last year, it warned that thousands more people could lose their homes as Covid protections ended. Since then, inflation has soared to 10.1 per cent as real wages have hit a record low. Meanwhile, government delivery of social housing has plummeted over the past decade.
With the housing crisis running the risk of giving way to a full-blown homelessness crisis and with the government seemingly unwilling or unable to tackle this problem, the private sector has muscled in. Several real-estate investment trusts (Reits), such as Civitas Social Housing (CSH), Triple Point Social Housing (SOHO) and Home Reit (HOME), as well as other investment vehicles, have sprung up over the past few years all promising the same thing: to provide homes for those most in need while at the same time delivering healthy returns for their investors.