Housing

The attractiveness of rural areas as places to live has over decades pushed up the price of market accommodation to purchase and rent. This combined with planning restrictions on new development and lower average incomes has meant that even the cheapest market housing is unaffordable to many local people. This is set alongside the historic problem that there is proportionally much less affordable accommodation in rural areas especially social rented housing (partly caused by Right to Buy) means that there is a shortage of rural affordable housing.

However positively there is an increasing understanding of the issues and higher profile for the debate through for example the Taylor Review of rural housing and the economy (2008). The challenge is to find solutions that are sustainable that address the problem effectively.

Affordable rural housing can be summarised in the following way:

• built with a subsidy by a housing association and made available for rent or shared ownership
• priority in allocations is given to households with a local connection to a village
• remains affordable for local people in perpetuity.

ACRE has complied a number of Policy Position Papers reflecting the issues of importance to rural communities and how our members in RCAN respond to them. The text below summaries ACRE's Housing Policy Position Paper.

ACRE wants to see thriving communities supported to develop in sustainable ways. A key factor in this is the provision of a suitable mix of affordable housing to enable local people to stay in their community. It is our vision that this will help support local services and facilities and ensure better quality of life for all.