A report released last year into projected housing needs in Jersey concluded that almost 7,000 additional homes – equivalent to a new small town – will be needed in the next decade.
And Housing Minister Sam Mézec has said that plans are in place to ‘drastically increase the number of social homes we provide’.
The minister also intends, as supply increases, to make social housing accessible to more people.
Currently, in order to qualify for social housing a person must be 18 or over, have housing qualifications, have a registration card and have a single or joint income of less than £40,000 per year. Additionally, people applying for social housing must also have either; a medical, physical or mental disability and be in need of a special type of housing; have a family with young children and be on a relatively low income; or be over 50 and in receipt of a relatively low income.
Senator Mézec said: ‘We will be drastically increasing the number of social homes we provide. There are 732 homes Andium are providing that they are on site for at the moment. That is around the figure on the social housing waiting list.
‘We have scope to broaden the criteria for who is eligible. Currently, if you are a single man in your forties, you won’t get on the list because you don’t fit the eligibility criteria. If we can widen the criteria, allowing more people to access social housing, then we free-up those spaces in the private sector.’
He added that there needs to be a change in the way Jersey uses its social housing stock.
‘If you look around Europe there are lots of countries where social housing is the demand housing in communities. Do we say it is a safety net for people who are vulnerable or is it a way of supporting people and families to have stability in the lives? People will have different circumstances where the volatility of the private sector is not good for them.’
Among the sites Andium are currently in the process of developing are Ann Court, the old police station at Rouge Bouillon and Le Squez in St Clement.
Senator Mézec added that in terms of addressing the Island’s growing housing crisis that people have been ‘rightly frustrated at the lack of progress over the last year-and-a-half’ but that now funding streams have been approved in the Government Plan that there can be ‘no more excuses’.
Senator Mézec also said that the lack of a population policy does not impact on his short-term plans for housing policy.
‘Last year we had an objective housing needs survey which was based on different population scenarios. Even with zero net migration the need for social housing is exactly the same more or less. We need 900 more social homes in the next ten years.’
The minister said his focus for this year would be on making improvements in the rental sector, but that in 2021 more will be done to assist first-time buyers.
‘In terms of home ownership, this year there probably won’t be too much that is actually achieved on that front apart from supporting, where we can, the Andium home buy scheme,’ he said. ‘They are finding sites that will be sold to first-time buyers. If parishes or housing trusts want to pursue that as well then we will support where we can.
‘I have £10 million next year to provide a first-time buyers housing scheme but there is not much detail at this point.
‘I don’t know what proportion might be for helping people with deposits or for acquiring land to build new homes but I have £10 million allocated for me.’
