MORTGAGES should come with a public health warning because the struggle to keep up with payments is making millions of people sick, the British Medical Association said yesterday.

Home ownership may be the great British dream, but the reality is that it often traps people in crumbling buildings they cannot afford to maintain and causes money worries that make them ill, according to the BMA.

Many who fall behind with their mortgage payments become so fearful of losing their home that they drink and smoke too much, their relationships break down and they even have more car crashes because they are so preoccupied, one contributor to the BMA report, Housing and Health, said.

The report points out that many of the country’s poorest people are owner-occupiers, yet there are no support networks available for them as there are for people in council or housing association homes.

The problem has grown, according to the report, since the home-ownership explosion that followed the introduction of the right-to-buy schemes in the 1980s, and while the number of repossessions is at its lowest level for years, about a hundred people a week are still losing their homes.

With the housing market stagnating, BMA experts are calling for a national safety net in case of a return to the traumas of the 1990s, when more than a million people had their homes repossessed. The report wants a health housing task force to be set up to address health issues related to home ownership, possibly including income protection schemes. The taskforce should report to ministers and establish a link between the health and housing professions.

Susan Smith, Professor of Geography at Edinburgh University who contributed to the report, said: “People who live in poor quality housing suffer, not just from the environmental hazards, but also from the psychosocial stress that comes from living on the wrong end of the poverty scale. If people live under chronic stress then their immune system suffers and they become vulnerable to health problems.

“If you have a large sector of society who are homeowners, but who can’t really afford to be, then health problems in society will multiply.”

Roger Burrows, Professor of Social Policy at the University of York and another contributor to the report, said that mortgage arrears and repossession should not just be viewed as a financial problem.

“The whole process that goes from mortgage arrears to repossession can take 12 to 18 months, which is a long time to be under stress. Drinking and smoking increase during that time and so do relationship breakdowns. People are more likely to have accidents, such as car crashes, because they are constantly thinking about their problems and are distracted,” he said. “We should be putting measures in place now to ensure that home owners have a proper safety net if there is a downturn.”

The report also looks at the overall impact of poor housing on the nation’s health. It says that the long-term health effects of children growing up in bed and breakfast accommodation might not be known for years.

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