Rental pricing caps (FOI)

Request

A

With regard to Jersey Policy Forums E petition briefing Pack for rental price caps law to limit rental prices to reasonable rents. In this document on page 9 of 52 shows diagram 1 the Percentage of rental households under rental stress in each rental housing category. The statistics say 53% of non-qualified, 45% of social and 73% of private qualified are under rental stress. This means 47% of non-qualified, 55% of social and 27% of private qualified are not under rental stress.

I would like to know what per cent and what number of households of the non-cost burdened percentages (47%, 55% and 27%) are not cost burdened because they are:

i) living in an overcrowded household and are not cost burdened because they have forced themselves into properties too small for their needs

ii) shared accommodation

B

With regard to Jersey Policy Forums E petition briefing Pack for rental price caps law to limit rental prices to reasonable rents. In this document on page 15 section 2 Affordability of Rental Housing and dynamics of Supply and Demand. 2.2 Rental Prices table of Jersey private sector rental price index. The table / graph shows “no date available” for the period 2012 to 2015,

Why was there no data for this period?

What happened that there is no information please?

Response

A

Information relating to the percentage of households in Jersey who experience rental stress is not available for:

i) households who occupy overcrowded accommodation

ii) households who share accommodation with other persons who do not form the same household

The number of households who experience rental stress was derived from the Jersey Household Expenditure Survey 2014 / 2015 (and published in the Housing Affordability in Jersey Report 2015). The Survey did not ask any questions in respect of the areas to which i) and ii) relate and only focused on the broad categories of tenure, which have been published (private rent, social rent and non-qualified).

It is important to make clear that the figures referred to in relation to the number of households who experience rental stress (53% of non-qualified, 45% of social rented, and 73% of private qualified rental) are based on the proportion of lower-income households (in the lowest 40% of the income distribution) that are paying more than 30% of their gross income on rental costs. It does not refer to the total number of households in Jersey who live in these categories of tenure.

B

There was no data available for the rental index for the period 2012-2015 as the requirement to register the rent payable under a lease with the Population Office was removed as a result of the introduction of the Control of Housing and Work (Jersey) Law 2012. This meant that rental data was no longer collected. Statistics Jersey began to produce a new rental index rents in 2016 based on historic advertised rents (rather than the actual charged rent as had been the case prior to 2012). This new data was then linked to a revised Jersey Private Sector Rental Index.