Derek Long: We can build a better future by taking family houses out of the list of luxuries

I’ll give you some clues. This luxury item can cost as much as 12 to 13 times the average income in most of the districts in North Yorkshire. Across the region, by one official measure, over 200,000 people are now languishing on waiting lists for it.

No, it’s not this Christmas’s latest must-have toy – more surprisingly, it’s housing. And the reasons why the humble home has become this century’s luxury good are revealed this month in the National Housing Federation’s Home Truths 2011 report.

We are neither building enough new homes nor refurbishing enough empty ones to keep pace with the region’s new households.

Last year, we managed to create enough properties to meet only one third of the 27,000 additional homes required by the region.

Because supply is outstripping demand, our experts think local house prices will rise by about 12 per cent by 2015, with private rents growing at the same time by 18 per cent. Even after the global economic meltdown, Yorkshire’s house prices remain 16 per cent higher than in 2006.

So, with mortgage lenders looking for deposits of 25 per cent, a couple will have to save around £30,000 to have a shot at their first step on to the housing ladder in York and North Yorkshire.

With well over £20,000 needed for deposits even in relatively cheaper South and West Yorkshire, the long grind to put together a deposit suggests a future for many filled with the grim compromises of the kitchen-sink dramas of 50 years ago.

It is no picnic even when you’re on the housing ladder. At a time when unemployment is rising and wage levels are constrained, in six Yorkshire districts families will need father and mother to bring home the average local wage, plus someone else working in their household, to afford a mortgage on an average property.

The immediate human cost of this is already apparent with homelessness 14 per cent higher in the region than in 2009/10. The longer term costs are more subtle.

Caught in a can’t buy/can’t rent bind, families will be forced into unnatural compromises.

Educational attainment will suffer a quiet erosion as children struggle to study in overcrowded accommodation.

On the other hand, the pressures of young families living apart or together within their parents’ homes will eventually translate into social services and medical caseloads.

Yorkshire’s rural communities are also feeling the pain.

Families are being forced out of villages they have lived in for generations by soaring property prices.

Almost two-thirds of the characters in Emmerdale could not afford to live in the village in real life.

The federation is fighting back with the Save Our Villages campaign in a bid to stop local families and young people being priced out of the countryside. This is supported by East Riding of Yorkshire Council amongst many local authorities.

It doesn’t have to be like this. There are solutions which won’t break the bank and could really help the economy. But they need to be adopted quickly before construction firms go out of business and their workers’ skills are lost.

A credible national strategy, committed to building affordable homes at scale in the North, would set the tone.

But it would need Government to look again at why the national affordable housing budget was cut by a staggering 63 per cent.

This is a poor deal for the taxpayer, because unlike most public/private collaborations, not for profit housing associations effectively double the taxpayers’ pound with their own borrowing.

Thinking again why the new system for “affordable rent” simply can’t work in some of the more deprived urban areas of Yorkshire feels both sensible and fair.

Releasing public land at reasonable costs for social developments could relieve the pressure on first time buyers. And finishing the housing market renewal job started 10 years ago would boost city economies and their future competitiveness, while really addressing the brownfield sites and empty homes in Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and Wakefield.

Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the appearance of the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid !” during Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign.

David Cameron’s team are keen students of American politics. We can only hope they realise that making the economics of the housing market work again for most people makes social and economic sense.

Derek Long is the head of the National Housing Federation’s northern regions. Its members provide two and a half million homes for more than five million people.