Key findings

• • Analyses of census data from 1991, 2001 and 2011 highlight stark and persistent ethnic inequalities in housing tenure and occupancy (overcrowding).

• • The private rental sector is increasingly being relied on to make up for the shortfall in affordable homes to buy and the availability of social housing. The speed of increase in private renting between 1991 and 2011 was greatest for the Indian, Pakistani and Black Caribbean ethnic groups whose proportion in private renting more than doubled.

• • Chinese, Black African, Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic groups have had persistently high levels of private renting over the last two decades.

• • Concerns about a ‘generation rent’ are particularly relevant for the more than half of young adults in Indian, White Irish, Chinese and Arab groups and three-quarters of Other White young adults who live in privately rented accommodation.

• • Ethnic inequalities in overcrowding persist: a third of households with a household reference person (HRP) who identifies as Bangladeshi are overcrowded, while over two-thirds of White British households have spare rooms.

• • The ‘housing crisis’ has manifestations throughout the country that affect ethnic groups in different ways in different parts of England and Wales; it is not solely a London issue.

• • To effectively remedy the ‘housing crisis’, policy needs to take account of the particular disadvantages facing some minority ethnic groups, and to distinguish policy responses to address the needs of recent immigrants and persistent ethnic inequalities in housing.

Introduction: the ‘housing crisis’ and the significance of ethnicity

A ‘housing crisis’ has been identified in Britain by the housing charity Shelter and others (Smith et al, 2014), and housing issues have surfaced as key social and public policy issues. The main problem is disparity between housing need, provision and access, which is a consequence of economic, political and demographic factors including the globalisation of banking systems, shifts in the role of the welfare state as regards housing, neglected investment in housing infrastructure and changing demographics and living arrangements (Lowe, 2011; Pawson and Wilcox 2012). What this means in practice is that it has become more difficult for people to find adequate, affordable and secure accommodation in the place they want to live. This does not, however, affect people equally: some people are at greater housing disadvantage than others (Dorling, 2014).