By Rachael Dennis, Chair of the West Yorkshire Housing Partnership
Every day in West Yorkshire, thousands of people and families face impossible choices as they struggle to find a safe, warm, and affordable place to call home.
Some are stuck in temporary accommodation, including hotels and B&Bs. Others are homeless or living in constant fear of losing their home. Many more are waiting, sometimes for years, on housing lists, simply hoping for stability and security.
If you look at the numbers, it’s clear just how big the challenge is. Around 85,000 households across West Yorkshire are currently on housing waiting lists. Last year alone, nearly 12,000 households received homelessness support, and over 1,100 were in temporary accommodation, nearly 100 of them families with young children.
The need for more affordable, high-quality homes is urgent. We are making a difference by upgrading existing homes and building new ones that strengthen communities and the local economy.
Last year, members of the West Yorkshire Housing Partnership retrofitted around 1,400 homes, with 1,743 more in the pipeline. We also built 1,436 new homes, and over 1,800 more are underway.
However, one of the biggest barriers to delivering more is the lack of long-term funding certainty. The current system of short-term funding cycles has slowed housebuilding and economic growth for decades, making it harder to plan, invest, and build. This cycle of short-term funding only creates uncertainty and makes it impossible to plan with confidence. If we want to unlock growth, attract investment, and meet the housing needs of future generations, we need to move beyond this approach.
That’s why we’re calling on the Government to use next weeks’ Spending Review to commit to a complete rethink of how affordable housing is funded. We need a stable, long-term plan, backed by a 10-year rent settlement to give our sector the certainty it needs.
With the support of other housing providers who manage around 1.7 million homes across the UK, our partnership has backed a joint submission to HM Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government outlining a clear, practical way forward.
One of the main asks is to reclassify housing investment as infrastructure spending. Housing is more than a social good, it’s essential infrastructure, just like roads, railways, schools, and hospitals. So, it’s time we treated it in the same way, equally important, and equally investable.
Solving the housing crisis isn’t just about building new homes. It’s also about reinvesting in the places where people already live, which is why we’re calling for a greater focus on regenerating towns and upgrading existing homes.
We’d like to see two clear funding streams, one for building new homes, and another for improving existing ones. This targeted approach would simplify the investment process, speed up delivery, and ensure funding reaches the areas that need it most. The housing crisis in West Yorkshire and across the UK is not inevitable. It’s the result of decades of political choices and policy failures. But it can be solved with the right decisions moving forward.
We have the vision, the partnerships, and the track record to deliver real change. What we need now is a commitment from Government to match our ambition.