Rural homeless 'twice urban rate'
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said the numbers of homeless
households in rural areas rose by 300% between 1978 and 2005. In
urban areas they rose 160%.
There are concerns housing is becoming less affordable in rural
Wales.
The charity has launched a commission to take evidence from experts
and the public over the next five months.
The study, being launched in Cardiff, will look at property prices,
affordability and availability of social housing outside of the
major towns and cities.
The foundation's report looked at house prices compared to household
income and found the "affordability ratio" had risen by 40% in two
years.
It said the ratio - the average house price divided by mean
household income - rose to 5.92 in 2005, when two years earlier it
stood at 4.21.
'Sparse and expensive'
The charity said the Commission on Rural Housing in Wales will have
an "independent insight into the issue of housing need in rural
Wales".
A consultation paper and questionnaire has already been sent to
organisations across Wales.
In addition to looking at existing research, the commission will
also hold four "evidence sessions" over the next five months to hear
from policy experts, officials and the public.
The commission's chairman Professor Derec Llwyd Morgan, a former
vice-chancellor of the Aberystwyth University, said it would
consider rural housing to be "everything outside the main cities and
towns".
He said: "Levels of salary are quite low and house prices are quite
high.
"If they can't afford to pay a mortgage, the difficulty of social
housing is that it is sparse and very expensive."
Craig Read and Mary Anne Young from Penycae, near Wrexham, who have
an 11-month-old son, were homeless for over a year.
They said they had to stay in a homeless centre before recently
being housed through the Wrexham Housing Alliance.
"It was horrible, it really was. Not knowing where you were going to
sleep the next night. We did look around but there was just nowhere
we could afford," Mr Reed said.
In June, two housing bodies said Wales was short of around 40,000
affordable homes.
The Home Builders Federation and the Chartered Institute of Housing
Cymru said fewer new homes were being built in Wales than at any
time since WWII.
'First-time buyers'
In a statement, Deputy Minister for Housing Jocelyn Davies said the
assembly government had made a number of commitments to increase
affordable housing.
"There is specific help for first time buyers through our Homebuy
programme and in rural communities we will look at broadening the
scope and definition of agricultural worker," she said.
"I am also looking at extending the support for the Rural Housing
Enablers, currently jointly funded, who are already in post across
rural Wales."
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