Cornish couple finally find home after three years living in friend's garden

• ITV News' Charlotte Gay went to meet Emma and Mike in their new home.

A Cornish couple have finally found a home after living in a caravan for three and half years due to the county's housing crisis.

Support workers Emma and Mike Beason moved into a caravan in their friend's garden after their landlord told them they needed their old home back.

Now living in a brand new one-bedroom flat, they can't believe their luck.

Emma said: "It didn't feel real. [We've] still got to pinch ourselves now. Yeah, it felt like we were staying in an Airbnb.

"It just didn't quite feel real. And it still has got that feel about it because we just love it."

Mike added: "Living in the in the garden three and a half years we were ghosted. We couldn't vote.

"So, you know, there's all those implications as well. You can get credit, you know, now we're back on the ladder and we're back to reality."

In West Penwith, Catrina has also been directly impacted by Cornwall's housing crisis.

She wrote about her experience living in a shed in her acclaimed memoir Homesick, which she started writing in 2015.

But nearly a decade on, she said the housing situation in Cornwall was getting worse rather than better.

She said: "It just feels like it's kind of tightening and squeezing and everybody's just kind of being funnelled into this very difficult financial position.

"Essentially, if you want to have a roof over your head, you have to do about three jobs or work like 50 hours a week and scrimp and save and just kind of spend your entire life doing that. And I think that makes me feel frustrated."

Fewer than one in ten homes in the county is classed as affordable, making buying one on local wages nearly impossible.

Group solving 'broken' housing system

Homes for Cornwall is a group trying to come up with practical solutions to fix the current "broken" housing system.

Emma Stratton, CEO of the Scarlett and Bedruthan Hotels, said we need to challenge the norm.

She said: "We recognise that it's really complex. The system is broken.

"So there's lots of things we've been talking to, lots of planners about how far can be, how far can we push the the planning system.

"And we've actually come up with something called our Acre project, which we are looking at, where communities can acquire land for the housing that they want and stay, you know, have a really big say in the sort of housing that is built and also stay in control in it.

"They could own it in perpetuity for houses forever and have those houses being given to local workers, which feels really exciting."

The Acre Project is one way architects and housing professionals could donate their skills, giving parish councils a shortcut to making small developments a reality.

Sam Galsworthy, the owner of the Trewithen estate, is in a position to donate land but said philanthropy is a small part of Homes for Cornwall's ideas for changing attitudes to the county's housing problems.

He said: "There's a great fear within the Duchy that we just need to concrete over this extraordinarily special county of ours and that's not the case at all.

"I mean, actually the county needs 50 to 60,000 homes by 2030. 0.8% of the landmass of housing.

"I hope that we can find the right balance providing the right kind of housing."