Refurb the Houses of Parliament or House a Third of Britain’s Homeless?

Property finance specialists, Pure Commercial Finance, have revealed where in the UK the housing crisis could be solved, should the £4bn Houses of Parliament refurbishment not go ahead.

The estimated cost of essential repairs in Westminster could instead build over 40,000 new properties could, housing almost 121,000 people based on the UK average of three people per property.

Government figures reveal 430,000 affordable homes have been built since 2010, but housing charity Shelter estimates a deficit of 3.2m homes and states there are around 320,000 homeless people in the UK – 170,000 in London alone.

Using internal data, Pure Commercial Finance calculated that the average 3-bedroom home in the UK costs £99,842.75 to build, meaning the Houses of Parliament budget, if matched, could house over a third of the UK’s rough sleepers (37.5%), or 71% of the capital’s homeless.

The chart below shows the number of cities that could be completely rebuilt with £4bn worth of government funding*.

*Based on three people per household.

Due to lower population sizes, you could rehome the below cities, under the same principles, almost four times over.

Ben Lloyd, Managing Director and Co-founder of Pure Commercial Finance, said:

“As development finance specialists, we deal with professional developers every day and are well-aware of the demand for affordable housing across the UK and the influence Brexit is having on borrowing.

“Although we would never suggest cancelling the refurbishment of such a prized national monument, we were shocked to see how matching the refurbishment budget could help towards solving the deficit.

“We placed millions of pounds of commercial property finance last year and will continue to ease the affordability and process of building across the UK for the foreseeable.”

Polly Neate, CEO of Shelter, stated:

“It’s unforgivable that 320,000 people in Britain have been swept up by the housing crisis and now have no place to call home. These new figures show that homelessness is having a devastating impact on the lives of people right across the country.”