Single mum-of-three back living with own mum as Cornwall's housing crisis bites
Jessica Cecil-Wright from St Mabyn near Wadebridge is struggling to find somewhere to rent
A single parent from Cornwall has told us she is back living with her own mum because of the housing crisis.
Jessica Cecil-Wright from Wadebridge, who has three young children, has been renting for the past seven years.
She briefly moved away before the pandemic but on her return, said she was "completely unable to find somewhere to rent".
The family are now sharing her mum's small holding at nearby St Mabyn and, according to The Times, her sister is living in the barn.
Jessica said: "I think this is for a multitude of reasons. Not just the pandemic but a rise in people buying not only second homes, third, fourth and fifth homes adding to people's portfolios of properties, but also long-term rentals being turned into Air B&Bs which has been a massive contributing to factor to this, now, housing crisis and it's both on rental and buying.
"The increase in prices of houses to buy is very evident and in my town, Wadebridge, properties that were, for example, £250,000 even a year ago are now more like £350,000 which is making it impossible for people, certainly people with one income, to buy any property. And then people who are relocating and adding to portfolios of properties, this has created an impossible situation".
Recent figures suggest the average home in Cornwall cost NINE TIMES the average salary in 2020.
It is understood the Duchy had over 10,000 active Air B&B listings in June 2021, compared to fewer than 70 rental properties available on Rightmove.
Jessica is calling for some sort of regulation and control, saying: "It's naïve to say other people can't buy properties from out of county because this part of Cornwall heavily relies on tourism and relies on those second home owners bringing money into the county but there has to be some system whereby there's a limit to how many properties they can buy, for example.
"And people who don't have homes, who live here and who have families here, then have to be prioritised in order to house them.
"I don't think this is just one problem. I think there are a whole host of contributing factors to this situation we are now in".
A petition, started by a woman whose friend was struggling to find a house in Newlyn, is calling to raise the tax on second homes and cap local rents and has had more than 45,000 signatures.
A demonstration over Cornwall's housing crisis will be held in Truro on Saturday 21st August, calling for no more second homes until every Cornish person has one.