Housing and pensions
Lower housing costs, greater financial security – could pension assets support access to a wider choice of homes for UK households?
For working-age households across the UK, finding a secure and affordable home can be hard. It’s a crucial determinant of financial security. And the implications of not having one are wide-ranging.
With lower housing costs, less worry and higher quality homes come better living standards, better health, and better outcomes. But for low-to-middle income households, choices around where to live are reduced by cost and by availability. That’s especially true for working-age households who have persistently lower levels of home ownership than their parents and grandparents. And they are less likely to be able to access social housing. As a result, more people are living in privately rented homes where they face the greatest uncertainty around the affordability and longevity of their living arrangements.
People are starting to ask if pensions could be part of the answer. This could mean allowing people to put some of their own pension saving towards buying a home. Or it could mean greater investment from pension funds in the supply of social and affordable homes that people need when they can’t buy their own. But in both cases, we need evidence to understand if the ideas could work. The purpose of this project is to discover it.
