Hi, how are you? Good evening, thanks very much for the big question of the week. So sorry, I'm responding late. This is ... to, you know, 11 or so. So as far as a situation, I think it's a huge crisis because, like, myself in just a very small room and it's so children at the moment and it's somehow difficult because I have a shared kitchen, but not shaving, bathroom and toilet bowl.

I have a lot of friends as experiencing such a thing. So I think this kind of room should be for maybe a single person without a child and also I have experienced a situation whereby. I have someone staying in an apartment where the kitchen area is tilde living room. So I think it should be canceled for people that has kids because it's not ideal for their safety.

Purpose. And also the use of says, it should be considered for people that are that doesn't have kids, except if there is going to be a lift, which we are very sure about that. I would it won't have any kind of issues and future. So I yeah, those are the things. I think I want to see having a studio flat, having a little space, should be for single person without children. Having

It says, without lived before single without her children, but people will children either with any disabilities or not. They should be considered as, you know, every area for them and especially the living room aspect. If you don't, the kitchen shouldn't be with the living room. So I'll be very happy and grateful if something is being done and there should be House for everyone.

Thank you very much for the big question. I look forward to answer more questions in future.

Today's Budget was the best piece of comedy I have seen in a long time! But on a serious note both the Labour and Conservative party are playing into the hands of reform and the Greens. It is great that the two child limit is being scrapped for those claiming Universal Credit, but with other tax increases it is hard to see how much better off families will actually be. Once again there was only mention of working families / people, with no mention of help for sick or disabled people, especially those like myself who are still living on legacy benefits despite being classed as claiming UC. There has not been an increase in my benefits for over eight years and will not increase again in April, meaning another year of cutbacks and further hardship. Labour only want to be seen to be helping people who are able to work and the Conservatives want to cut benefits further for those who can’t work. There was also no mention of continuing help and support for people living in poverty over the coming years. There is so much more work to be done in order to make a fair future for all citizens of the UK.

Housing rate allowances are not reflective of how much private rentals cost. For example in Cardiff, a two-bed housing rate allowance is £800. If you look on the biggest site where private rentals are advertised, there is one property. Most two beds in Cardiff are between £900 to £1100. That one property also requires a credit check, references from previous landlord or a financial guarantor if you haven't rented before. Therefore, because local housing rate allowances are not reflective of what private rentals cost, tenants on benefits are being pushed into poverty as they are having to make up the rental shortfall.

At present I am having to make up £50.00 per month, as a single parent. Next year when my rent rises I will have a bigger shortfall no doubt to make up. Also the checks that private rentals ask of tenants are difficult. When I rented my flat five years ago, I had to provide a working age guarantor who earned more than £35,000 per year. I had trouble finding someone and in the end I had to ask my brother-in-law. I also had to pay four months rent up front and the bond, undergo a credit check, provide three months worth of bank statements, proof of income and character/work reference and have a zoom interview with the landlord! I was lucky enough to be able to supply all these things, some may not and will find themselves unable to rent privately. A lot of the checks above I had to under go were pretty standard and some private rentals I looked at stipulated no children! All these things I have mentioned are contributing to poverty and increasing the risk of people finding themselves homeless.

So we were subject to an unusual style eviction by a previous landlord.

Sixteen years we'd lived at the property so it was heart wrenching to have to think about moving home. Not to mention having severe mobility issues myself and with my youngest due to sit final school examinations, it was a stressful time.

Not only did it have a severe emotional impact on my family but significant financial ones also.

The landlord eroded my trust in the private renting sector. He was already choosy about which repairs he carried out on the property and also demanded additional payment for the privilege of letting us stay the extended time he deemed fit for us to stay before we had a deadline to leave by, offering no safety net if we weren't fortunate to find alternative accommodation.

Not being in employment made looking for an alternative home difficult and pricy because we needed to find somewhere within similar distance to the school my youngest was attending.

We didn't qualify for assistance from the local authority, because of the way the landlord went about the eviction.

There were substantial deposits to pay, on a new property, furniture removals to pay for, replacement goods to purchase, it was costly for us. There wasn't really any help with any of this process. I had to beg for help packing up on social media only because help was available at the time due to the pandemic. Otherwise this would have killed me to do solo. So I'd like to see this aspect changing. Finances to support this process or help with the practical elements of moving home with a disability. As it happened I didn't have help from family or friends but a bunch or random strangers which was quite remarkable in itself, but a sign of the strange times we were living in.

Even when we were eventually able to secure renting another property it was a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.

The property was much colder, tatty and had damp problems. Many of our belongings were damaged by mould growth. There was no way to dispute this with the landlord because they claimed it was due to condensation. Had we pursued a complaint, I imagine we would have had to suffer the consequences, ie either rent increases, suffered another no fault eviction, or possibly not been provided with favourable references when moving again. So we only ever saw the move as a stop gap. It was a 2 year stop gap nevertheless.

Where is there any support to understand rental laws, unless you're prepared to spend weeks waiting for a CAB appointment to be offered generic information, not specific enough to act on. I spoke over the phone to advisers with Shelter on a few occasions. Again, it was helpful but I was tasked with looking through materials and reading I couldn't really figure out very well. I would recommend them to others and use the services again if need by.

So it's no wonder we thought we had won the jackpot when all my bidding on the social housing list eventually paid off. We love where we live.

Ideally more advice centres are needed to support low income families/vulnerable and disabled through the process of renting, and moving home.

Just a shame it took as long as it did to eventually be offered something. But they say good things come to those who wait... And wait and wait...

I would like to see more affordable housing for young people and better council housing provision for younger people. My middle son (he's 20) went through a relationship breakdown a year ago (Nov 24) and ended up moving back in with myself and his younger brother (who is 10) in our 2 bedroom council house. The boys have been sharing a room for the past year. My son works full time as a chef and earns a good wage for his age but there is a vast shortage of affordable housing in rural Scotland and private rents are upwards of £600 per month for a bedsit/small flat which in any case are few and far between. My son has saved and saved to ensure he could afford to move out of our overcrowded home but had applied for numerous private lets before eventually being successful in an application. However, he was told by the council and several housing associations that whilst he could put in an application he would have 'virtually no chance' of ever getting one. This makes me wonder about young people who are unemployed/cannot work/disabled. How are they meant to afford private rents? and are they expected to live in overcrowded homes, with their parents forever? It's a sad and stressful situation to be in and whilst my son is one of the luckier ones, others may not have the same experience

I currently receive housing benefit through universal credit. At the moment I am managing. However it concerns me as time goes on my landlord has increased the rent twice and I’m still gettting the same amount of help from universal regardless. If it continues to rise then it’s going to be a struggle.

The shortage of affordable homes to rent has put me into debt.

Private landlords have increased their rent, making me have to find deposits and 1 month rent up front plus removal costs to the next home.

The homes got smaller in size and conditons worsened and the rent was more.

The Local Housing Allowance is ludicrously out of touch with realities. For my area (where I live with my two children) the LHA rate for a 2 bed property is £875 - you won't find a single property on the market for that rate. Now my daughter has turned 10 (my son is 7) I get the 3 bedroom rate of LHA: £1,200 which is funnily enough exactly the rent I pay for our 2 bed flat and frankly that £1,200 is on the cheap side when you take a look at Rightmove et al. So the theory is that LHA rate has been increased for me to help me afford a separate bedroom for my daughter when the reality is it now finally helps me afford the current living situation and to address my daughter's growing maturity I've given her a room of her own and filled the living room with my son's toys making that essentially 'his space' and he now has to sleep in my room.

Now that the battle has seemingly been won on the two-child limit (a battle I was fully on board with despite it having no direct impact on my family circumstances, knowing how much of a difference it would make to fellow Changing Realities participants with more than two children), focus should now shift to housing. With LHA, the simplest ask is to stop the freeze, the second is to reinstate it to its original value of 50% market rates etc.

Yet I feel we need a meeting with the Housing Secretary because I feel his 'build, baby, build' rhetoric and hitting the 1.5million new build target is really unhelpful. What we need to focus on is the homes that are needed not raw volume. By this I mean look at my situation, by the system's thinking I should take my luxurious new higher LHA payment and find my family a nice 3 bed property to rent. Take a look at Rightmove for properties to rent in my area with 3 bedrooms. There are 8 properties. The cheapest of these is £1,500 a month. The next cheapest are two homes at £1,650 a month (£450 a month higher than the LHA for 3 beds in my area) but its actually a little unclear if these are actually two properties in a very similar location or the same property listed twice by OpenRent and a lettings agent so is in fact quite likely we're only talking about seven properties available, not eight. Then the next cheapest is £1,900 (a whopping £700 over the LHA rate) and the remaining four properties are new build 'luxury' apartments listed for between £2,050 and £2,195 a month. This is the reality of housing.

Going onto the social housing wait list is the alternative but there simply are not enough three bed homes for social rent either. So my point is this, if 1.5million (an ambitious target most assume he'll miss) is indeed met but is met through reducing the number of social homes needed to be built (see London situation), or through mass expansion of office block conversion into tiny 1 and 2 bed flats then this is not going to resolve the crisis in family accommodation in this country. When government is starting to worry about both the birthrate and ever-increasing demands to ratchet up LHA, surely the lack of affordable 3 bed homes should be a priority?

At the same time Brighton Council shows the way (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/26/right-to-buy-reverse-brighton-tackling-social-housing-crisis) in how government could utilise Homes England as a vehicle for massively reducing the social housing waiting lists, increasing reassurance for those selling their home that a buyer will come quickly (with all the knock on economic productivity benefits that brings) and because of the new way of recording government accounting (public sector net financial liabilities) these are asset purchases that means any government borrowing to buy them is instantly offset by the acquisition of the asset as well as producing rent.

In fact if Homes England undertook this purchasing activity at scale (perhaps acting as buyer of last resort for homes that have been on the market without offers for more than 3 months and an instant 5% below market value offer available for people seeking to sell quickly) the way it could work is that homes that are in immediate social rent demand could simply be rented out after the purchase, homes that aren't suitable in their current form could be converted into smaller units (think of giant 16 room mansions unsold for months that could become luxury apartments) and these are sold onto the market by Homes England for profit which is reinvested in building social rent homes or if there is an area where the policy has meant Homes England acquires a bunch of 4 and 5 bed homes but demand locally is for 1 and 2 bed or 3 bed they can again convert homes into 2 separate homes for social rent.

Rocket boosters could be further put under such a policy by offering 100% capital gains relief to landlords who have UC claimants currently in their property and are willing to sell up to Homes England or a local council/housing association directly and in doing so the government pays out less in Housing Element as the social rent levied would be lower than the rent being charged. Everyone is a winner.

This kind of bold intervention is what we require, it matches the urgency of the problem rather than hanging hope on the unknown market effects of building whatever developers can muster to meet the 1.5million target.

Even as homeowners, we still feel the housing crisis, eg rising bills, mortgage costs, and repairs make everything tight, especially with kids. One expense can throw things off balance. Help with essential repairs, and more stability in the housing system will go along way to support families.

The housing crisis has really affected not me directly but some of my friends that have been on the waiting list for years especially after they grant them asylum they give them temporary accommodation and keep them there up till like 5 years in some cases.

Assessment risk, Maintenance done properly.

So in answer to how the housing crisis has affected me and my family. It means for me, I'm going to have to sell my house in York as it is too expensive for me to remortgage to stay here. I'm going to have to relocate to a cheaper town and all the upheaval that comes with that. But it does mean I will have housing that I can afford, either to buy or private rent short-term, till I find a another house to buy. And it's all the emotional stuff because living in York was a childhood dream of mine that has obviously - it was a dream at the start and now it's becoming a nightmare so it's time to move on.