Z2K produced the Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Unaffordable Housing in 2005 . This set out a reasoned critique of the housing policies of successive governments over a 30 year period. Z2K approached the Treasury in March 2005, pointed out that the mortgage debt outstanding had risen by a factor of about 18 since 1980, leading to a sixfold increase in house prices over the previous decade, and asked whether this was a ground for concern. They were told it was not . The severe financial crisis, triggered by irresponsible lending in the UK and US, unfolded just over two years later.

Given this background we approached the 2009 Budget Statement with a key question in mind - is this a set of measures geared to ‘mend the system’ without radical change so we have the same problems in the next upswing, perhaps in 7-10 years - or have significant lessons been learned from the severe crisis that has affected the housing system? Our assessment of the Budget Statement is not reassuring in the light of this question.

The Chancellor’s terminology was in itself revealing. In the first eight minutes he made three references to housing matters – he mentioned home owners, home buyers and mortgages. The help for the banks was to facilitate home loans so that people could access ‘the housing ladder’, the low interest rates will help mortgage payers and the fears people have are to do with ‘the loss of jobs and the family home’. Neither here nor anywhere else in his Statement was there any mention of, or measure for, the 30% of the UK population who rent. Similarly although there were numerous mentions of ‘families’, sometimes ‘hardworking’, it is almost as if the very significant proportion of the population who live alone or in non-related groups do not exist.

Yet it is Z2K’s experience that many of those who are most vulnerable in society, and who have no asset base to fall back on, are renters and/or living in ‘non-standard’ households – or indeed are street homeless. The Budget Statement was silent on all these groups. We find this paradoxical from a Chancellor who claimed in his opening statement that the ‘core values’ of his Government were ‘fairness and opportunity’

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