Clause 40 - Other amendments of section 22 of Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998
Higher Education Bill
3:15 pm
Mrs Anne Campbell (Cambridge, Labour)
Someone who has lived in a housing association property for some time may earn £33,000, but there is no way that someone coming into the city on that kind of salary would qualify for a housing association property. The Hundred Houses Society, a housing association in Cambridge, told me that it would not be able to offer a property to anyone earning over about £18,000 a year. That makes it almost impossible for anyone earning between £18,000 and £30,000 a year to live in the city, because they would not be able to afford the rent or mortgage repayments, and they would not qualify for local authority housing or for housing association properties. There is a real dilemma there. I do not say that that situation exists in all expensive housing areas, but it is certainly true in my constituency.
For a mortgage payer in Cambridge to be as well off as someone earning £33,000 in Manchester, they would need to earn £8,400 more a year. In other words, in Cambridge, one would have to earn £41,400 a year to be as well off as someone in Manchester earning £33,000 and paying a different mortgage.