Don't write off 'right-sizing'

The States has agreed to building 313 new units of accommodation every year for the next five years. Through the SSHI, it has an idea of who should build them – private sector or public – and what size homes they should be, to meet market demand.

The new ‘target’ – though it is not a target, more guidance – is designed to inform developers over housing, land and planning policy, not constrain them, says the States.

Understandably, people get concerned when they hear of plans to build more than 300 homes every year. Where they will be built? How they will be built? Is there capacity in the sector?

Less understandable is the apparent levels of anger fuelled by references to right-sizing in the housing market. The States knows it can’t, and won’t, force people to ‘right-size’ – the new fashionable term for what used to be called downsizing – but it’s entirely appropriate to note where people may be carrying extra rooms in their family homes and may wish to move out and realise some of the cash within that home, if only ‘right-sizing’ options were better.

It’s a bid to offer a better profile mix, and a possibility to provide the first step towards incentivising this trend, while further work is done on the motivations and requirements of older people seeking to right-size.