Kent Tonight Special: Kent's Housing Crisis

KentOnline / KMTV

Soaring rents and difficulty buying have created a housing crisis in the UK. KMTV explores the local impact across Kent and asks if holiday lets are making things worse.

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to this Kent Tonight special on KMTV with me, Josh McLaughlin.

00:25Tonight, soaring rents and difficulty buying. We're in Maidstone as the housing crisis rages

00:31on in the South East.

00:33I had to up and leave, take my kids and all of my staff, and I lived in a car for about

00:40two weeks.

00:43And holiday home headache. Our Airbnbs and short-term lets, making the housing issue in

00:48Kent worse.

00:49I think without the visitor income that we've got, these local communities would struggle

00:54and the independent businesses wouldn't be popping up and thriving.

01:00First up, the housing crisis here in Kent and across the South East has touched thousands

01:04of families, especially as the average house price has been more than eight times higher

01:09than workplace earnings for the last five years, according to the Office for National Statistics.

01:14Our reporter, Emily Sinclair, has travelled around the county to hear from some of the

01:18people who've been hit the hardest.

01:20It actually got to the point where I felt a little bit shameful because it was, it was

01:25just, I'm like, I'm a cash buyer and it wasn't, you know, it was quite a lot of money and I

01:29still couldn't find a house.

01:31Louise first tried to buy a place of her own three years ago. What she thought would be a

01:34pretty straightforward task turned into over a year of struggles.

01:38I had to up and leave, take my kids and all of my staff. And I lived in a car for about,

01:44it must have been about two weeks. I lived on my friend's sofa. I lived at my pastor's

01:51house. And all the while, I'm trying to still find a house. It was really hard. It was really

01:57hard. And it put an impact on a lot of my relationships with a lot of people at the time, because I was

02:03just so stressed.

02:04House sale prices have returned to their pre-pandemic affordability levels in England

02:09and Wales. But since 2018, house prices in Kent have been higher than the England and

02:14Wales medium. So what does that mean for people trying to live in our county?

02:18If bananas had risen at the same rate as private rents nationally since 1988, a bunch would cost

02:24£13 or thereabouts in the supermarket. People have a real right to be angry and want change

02:30around this issue.

02:31What doesn't make sense is you look around Maidstone and you see all these housing properties

02:36going up, like one massive half's another. And I'm sitting here thinking, how on earth

02:41are we still in such a crisis with housing?

02:44I put that exact question to Maidstone Borough Council's Cabinet Member for Housing and

02:48Homelessness, Simon Wales.

02:50How, right now, is there still a crisis with housing? What would you say to that individual?

02:55Because it takes time for these to feed through the system. We do have 2,000 people near that

03:01on our waiting list, which is coming down. I think Maidstone Council is doing more than

03:07a lot of places in terms that we are now building. We're in a fortunate position that we do have

03:11enough finances to be able to do this. And some councils aren't quite so fortunate in terms

03:16of their finances. But we have a reasonable amount in reserves, which you are putting

03:21almost exclusively into housing.

03:23Knowing how difficult it can be to find housing, Louise now works for Making a Difference to

03:28Maidstone, a local charity with an outreach centre, food bank and charity shop to support

03:33those in need.

03:34I think working here and going through what I went through a few years ago, kind of gives

03:40you that grace to understand what other people are going through.

03:44As Louise turns to helping others, is there enough housing support for locals in Kent?

03:49Emily Sinclair, KMTV.

03:52And Emily joins me in the studio now. That was a powerful story there. But what is actually

03:56being done in Kent to change things?

03:58It certainly was, Josh. You know, after speaking to a range of residents across our county, I put

04:03that very question to East Senate MP Polly Billington. And this is what she said.

04:08Everybody who is concerned about the number of housing, numbers of houses being built, also

04:13knows people who are struggling to be able to get a house. So we need to get that balance

04:19right. And that partly means legislation. It partly means money. And it partly means local

04:24powers to local leaders, particularly at the council level, in order to be able to set a

04:31plan for the overall community.

04:33So Polly told me that there was far too many people in Thanet who were really struggling

04:38to get a safe and secure roof over their head. But she did acknowledge that any sort of change

04:43takes a really long time to be implemented. We know that for some places in Kent, especially those

04:47seaside resorts like Margate and Deal, that holidaymakers are a massive part of their community.

04:53And so I asked Polly whether she feels Labour got the balance wrong between boosting tourism and

04:58protecting housing.

05:01So what I am arguing is that the local authority needs to have the powers to be able to not just

05:06register short term holiday lets and know how many there are, but to also have a have a control over

05:13how many there are.

05:14Thanks, Emily. Now, one of the factors quoted as worsening the housing crisis in Kent is the growing

05:20number of short term holiday lets. With more than 850,000 nights reserved across the southeast in

05:26August alone, tourism to the Garden of England is boosting local economies. Many locals, though,

05:33are feeling squeezed out of their own towns by staycationers. Our reporter Chloe Brewster headed to

05:39the coast to find out more. Margate is Britain's oldest seaside destination. They've got the beach,

05:45they've got the shops and they've got the fish and chips. But do they have the homes?

05:49Short term lets have always been a thing on the coast. But as rents rise nationally,

05:52are they doing more harm than good?

05:55Local people who want to live here, the rents have gone up. And that makes things a little

06:01bit harder for people these days.

06:02It's not very affordable unless you're going in with like a share of people. It's just

06:07not cost effective for you anymore.

06:09It's really good in the summer, but holiday lets don't want, people don't want to come here in the

06:14winter, do they?

06:15Chris Thomas is a representative from homeless charity Porchlight.

06:18We've heard of landlords selling up or evicting people from their properties to turn it into

06:24airbnbs, which obviously creates additional homelessness.

06:27In August 2025, UK short-term rentals topped 491,000, up from the year before. The South East saw 56,000

06:37listings, ranking third after London and the South West. FOI data from Folkestone and Hive and FANIT show

06:44that while below their 2022 to 2023 peaks, numbers remain higher than during the COVID-19 years.

06:50For thousands heading to holiday homes up and down the country every year, it's clear the industry can

06:55get quite lucrative. I'm here on the gorgeous Cape coastline to talk to Arthur, who runs a series of

07:00holiday homes around the county.

07:02Having grown up in Deal, Arthur joined his family's property management business of 13 years. They now

07:08operate more than 150 self-catering cottages.

07:11The holiday letting provides a huge amount of jobs. Not just jobs, but also visitor income.

07:16All of our guests eat out, drink out, they go and visit the galleries, they go to the local independent

07:25shops. I think without the visitor income that we've got, these local communities would struggle

07:32and the independent businesses wouldn't be popping up and thriving. It's definitely a balance of having

07:39affordable housing for locals, but I think in a location like Deal or Whitstable,

07:45a lot of the properties just aren't suitable for a family to live in full time. So they lend themselves

07:51really well for people to come for short amounts of time, long weekends or a week, and contribute to

07:59the local economy while they're here.

08:01It's a complicated issue, but it's clear we're all looking to wave goodbye to soaring rents.

08:06Chloe Brewster for KMTV in Margate and Deal.

08:10We did reach out to Airbnb for a response on some of the comments made there,

08:14but we didn't get a reply. Now, with Rachel Reeves' budget recently setting out Labour's

08:19financial plan for the country, what's on the agenda for housing? To help break it down,

08:23I'm joined by Tudor Price from Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce. It's great to have you here,

08:28Tudor. So I guess first question everybody will have at the top of their minds is what is your

08:33initial reaction to the budget and how will it impact housing locally?

08:36Well, from a business perspective, I think it was all the business community can sort of exhale now.

08:42We've been holding our breath, waiting to see if there's going to be another big hit. Thankfully,

08:46it wasn't like the last budget. So most businesses will now relax and start to plan for the future.

08:52Specifically within the housing market, I think there was some positives within that from a sort of

08:58house builder's perspective. Just sort of winding back momentarily, most employers recognise the housing

09:06issue that we have here, particularly in Kent, and the problem that has in terms of being able to

09:11attract and retain staff. So there is a real conflict, if you like, between the business model that is

09:18property management and rental, and then obviously the needs of local business employers and organisations.

09:24So the Chamber of Commerce and the business community here have been calling for an increase

09:30in the number of houses that can be built, primarily to try and address this shortfall with increasing

09:36rental prices because of lack of available property and the fact that housing is far outstripping the

09:43financial reach of many of your average workers here in Kent. So in the budget, we saw increased funding to

09:50try and address and simplify the planning process because that drags on and can take a huge

09:54amount of time. We've seen some clear leaning towards increase in the rental income in terms

09:59of tax contribution. So again, it's sort of encouraging that business model perhaps to

10:03sort of try and cool off a little bit. And generally, you've sort of seen some positive

10:07moves around freeing up some devolution around local town centres as well to enable some funding.

10:12So I think actually the government seem to have taken on board some of these issues around the housing

10:17issues that we have here, and businesses are playing a part in trying to address that.

10:21And I think one of the biggest kind of announcements that were made as well,

10:26specifically that will be on the top of the mind for renters,

10:29is the rise in income tax for landlords, which is going to be up 2% from April 2027.

10:36The Chancellor has called this fair. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party,

10:40has said that renters are going to be hit the hardest by this. What are your thoughts?

10:45Both are right. What happens is the market has evolved over time.

10:50Now, when you make any changes to legislation, what happens is those entrepreneurs and those

10:54people that are relying on that sort of income adapt to the new legislation. And what we saw was

10:59when people are being taxed higher on their second homes, what happens is suddenly there was an

11:04explosion in buy-to-let properties, in holiday lets rather, because it was more tax efficient.

11:11So there's a business model that's at work here, which is not helping the wider economy. So

11:16the Conservative opposition quite rightly are saying, yes, there will be a short-term

11:21hit for rent, because until we build more houses, there will be a continued lack of stock and

11:26availability. And most landlords, of course, are looking to pass on those costs to the renters.

11:32Thank you, Tudor. Apologies.

11:34That's a number of bits and pieces.

11:35Sorry, that's all we have time for this evening. Thank you so much for chatting with us, Tudor.

11:38Don't forget, for anybody watching, you can always keep up to date with your latest news across the

11:42county by logging on to kmtv.co.uk. Thank you. Have a nice evening and take care.

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