Has Manchester rebuilt London’s housing crisis?

There is more than one parallel to be drawn between Manchester and London in recent years, from the soaring central skyline to the city’s growing status on the national political stage. But perhaps the most striking is its housing crisis.

Those on lower incomes here face a perfect storm. As rates of housing benefit for private sector tenants have been largely frozen, cut or capped by government, the city around them has become the poster-child for northern economic renaissance, pushing rents beyond their reach.

Manchester, and therefore Manchester’s housing, is now seriously desirable. There were reportedly no empty units at all in the city centre a few months back, of any kind; however visible the scale of recent residential development has been, it still isn’t meeting demand.

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That market pressure has now crept far beyond the city centre, too, meaning human consequences other than economic growth, just as it has in the capital.

There has not been, for some years, a single ward in the city where average rents can be covered by Local Housing Allowance, the housing benefit for private sector tenants. That includes several areas that rank high among the UK’s most impoverished neighbourhoods.

Social housebuilding has largely stagnated, so as people have then been evicted out of their private tenancies due to rising rents, Manchester now has the highest rate of people in emergency accommodation outside of the capital - apart from Luton - and, in fact, has a considerably higher rate than Islington and Camden. Hundreds of homeless families are being housed outside of the city.

It’s beginning to look a lot like London.

Manchester