Jon Quinn: Affordable housing will be key to winning swing seats in 2015

Jon Quinn worked for the Conservative Party for 14 years. He now works for the housing charity Shelter. This blog is written in a personal capacity. 

From Noel Skelton in the 1920s through to Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, Conservatives have sought to create a property owning democracy for nearly a century. Back in the 1980s, at the height of Thatcherism, who would have predicted that home ownership would have started to fall just two decades later?

The decline in home ownership started back in 2003 during good economic times, and well before the start of the banking crisis and any problems with accessing mortgage funds.

And it’s young people who are having the most difficulties. Shelter has just published independent research which shows it’s taking young families more than a decade to get on the property ladder. Without more affordable houses, home ownership won’t be growing any time soon.  

Single people face the greatest barriers to home ownership, needing an average of more than 14 years to save enough for a deposit, unless they can find a partner, trapping many in uncertain private renting or forcing them to live with their parents well into adulthood.