Editor

John Rees Moss’s letter (‘Young priced out by wages’, 4 November) in response to mine shows that there is an urgent need for meaningful discussion about solving the housing crisis in Wales.

I agree with Mr Moss that the disparity between wages and house prices is the crux of the problem and hope that was clear from my previous letter. (Edited out were my references to Catrina Davies’s recent book, Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed, in which she notes that had the cost of food increased in line with the cost of housing since she came of age, a chicken would now cost £51!)

Yet Mr Moss seems to think that the solution is earning more money. While we can all agree that higher wages would help, the creation of better-paid jobs throughout Wales in every sector is, unfortunately, a highly unlikely scenario—and even more improbable in the wake of the Covid crisis. According to figures in an article published in the Cambrian News in 2018, the median wage in Ceredigion would have to be more than doubled— from £23,118 to £50,064—in order to bring wages in line with average house prices (£175,225), with a ‘house-price-to-income’ ratio of about 3.5 being commonly considered reasonable and affordable (in 2017 it was 7.58 in Ceredigion).

And even if it were possible to create a lot more higher-paying employment in Wales, that wouldn’t help the people not working in those particular jobs. The social divide between those who can afford to buy a home and those who cannot would only become further entrenched, rather than bridged. The solution must lie in bringing the cost of housing back in line with other living costs and wages, as well as in regulating the rental market and in the provision of more social housing.

There is also the question of extra pressure on the housing market in places popular with tourists. Recent protests in Gwynedd over second-home ownership and the unaffordability of houses for locals show that the current situation is not sustainable and that radical change is needed.

The problem is that society has lost sight of the fact that houses should be homes rather than investments. Depriving people of the chance to have a home of their own is no way to grow creative, contented and cohesive communities, and recent correspondence in the Cambrian News has delineated an ideological rift between second-home owners and someone with no home of her own. There is a need for constructive, frank and open discussion in order to find the common ground and solutions that will ensure everyone in Wales has access to an affordable (first) home. Surely that is something we can all agree on.

Dr A J Fitzgerald Would-be local, Swansea

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