Insights: Housing, renting, and ageing

Like I say, we took a broad view of the importance of housing to health and the roles that it might play, but private renting came out as having the greatest association with speed of ageing. [...] And looking at the results, and then looking at this in context with other findings, we think a large part of this result is it’s reflecting the sort of chronic, grinding stress or insecurity associated with private renting. [...] And so, what could this mean for government policy? What needs to happen, do you think? Amy Clair 07:25 We think this really supports calls to improve security for private renters so, as critical as it sounds like we’re being about private renting and in security of private renting, it’s important to remember that the short tenancy agreements sorry the presence of no-fault evictions. [...] You know, there’s been some high profile cases of quality issues there, but we need to have a good look at housing policy, recognising the important role that housing policy plays in people’s health, and acknowledging that more and more people are having to live in the private rented sector as owner-occupation becomes less accessible because of high deposits, and the difficulty of saving for those. [...] There’s over a million households on the social housing waiting list in England alone, for example, so as much as people might want to think about a change in the tenure composition of households, we need to do something in the short term to make sure the people that are living in the private rented sector aren’t having these negative health impacts – and that means improving security.