Underoccupation of housing is clearly an issue in a country where many people are grossly
overcrowded and others homeless.
But the Government’s hypocrisy on the issue is demonstrated by their response to two
events – their hostile reaction to the publication today of a report on underoccupation amongst home owners; and their refusal to accept a Labour proposal in the House of Lords to soften the impact of housing benefit cuts on social tenants deemed to have more space than they need.
In the Lords, an amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill by Labour’s Lady Patricia Hollis proposed a modest change to the effect that the regulations governing the removal of
housing benefit from social tenants with one or more spare rooms should take into account the availability of suitable accommodation to which the tenant might move. The Minister, Lord Freud, refused to accept the amendment, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of tenants will face a benefit cut with no reasonable prospect of being able to take avoidance action by moving to a smaller home, arguing that it was not ‘fair’ for social tenants to have properties that are larger than required whilst others are overcrowded. Tenants, unable to move, will face what is in effect a fine for something over which they have no control.
The report by the Intergenerational Foundation argued that even if you allowed home owners a spare room there are 18 million unoccupied bedrooms across England. More than half of over-65s are in homes with two or more spare bedrooms. They say that the tax system encourages home owners to ‘hoard’ space and that there are few if any incentives to downsize. As a result, housing resources and housing wealth are increasingly concentrated in the hands of existing, often elderly, home owners while younger people, often with families, are increasingly excluded from being able to buy family homes.
IF argued for a series of changes including abolishing stamp duty for downsizers, increasing the supply of appropriate homes, especially bungalows, for downsizers, introducing a property value tax, and abolishing council tax concessions for single occupation.
The report deserves to be debated seriously. There has been some (deserved) criticism for its tone, the simplistic notion of one generation stealing from another, and the use of words like ‘hoarding’. I think there is also some deficiency in analysis and in particular around the assumption that older home owners being taxed or incentivised to downsize would automatically benefit young families and get them a suitable home. The market mechanism would not necessarily achieve this and the core problem of house
values being too high in relation to incomes would remain.
Serious debate was the last thing on Grant Shapps’ mind. He was quick with a damning quote, telling the BBC “Whilst this report makes interesting reading, we do not agree that people should be taxed or bullied out of their homes.”
The difference between Lord Freud’s attitude to tenants and Grant Shapps’ attitude to
home owners is stark. Any attempt to make home ownership fairer by addressing its tax advantages over other forms of investment and other forms of tenure is seen as bullying, whereas anything goes in relation to tenants.
The truth is that it is social tenants who are about to be bullied out of their homes. The change in housing benefit rules for social tenants with a spare room is one of the more callous and coercive elements in the Welfare Reform Bill, but there is still very limited awareness of its huge potential impact.
An excellent piece on the same topic by Patrick Butler in the Guardian can be found here.
Author: Steve Hilditch
A new report from the National Housing Federation, Chartered Institute for Housing and
Shelter makes an excellent assessment of the Tory-led coalition’s performance to
date.
Stuffed with useful data, using a traffic-light system, and looking at 10 key areas of policy,
the report gives the government 4 red lights, 3 amber lights and 2 green lights, with one deemed too early to say. The page of headline findings is a brilliant one page summary of the key happenings in housing since the election.
Red lights are given to
- Housing supply – starts at low levels, huge cuts in investment in affordable homes
- Homelessness – numbers accepted and placed in temporary accommodation rising
- Help with housing costs – cuts to HB having major impact on people on low incomes
- Affordability in PRS – private rents rising fast, impact of local housing allowance caps
Amber lights are given to
- Planning – scrapping regional plans has lost homes, doubt over new planning framework
- Evictions – mixed evidence on repossessions and arrears
- Home ownership – affordability not improving, prices still volatile
Green lights are given to
- Empty homes – numbers falling, new incentives to bring homes into use
- Mobility – clear plans to help social tenants to move more easily
No assessment is made of
- Overcrowding – absence of data means too early to judge impact of policy
It may be ungenerous to quibble, but I think mobility of social tenants is undeserving of
equal status with the others and is there to make the picture look more balanced. A wider measure of the impact of policy on the overall rights of social tenants would surely lead to another red light (due to changes in security and the emphasis on ‘affordable rent’) with a small tinge of amber for the plans to improve tenant mobility.
Given the continuing decline in home ownership and the inability of first time buyers to get into the market, I think a red light there would also be a more realistic assessment.
The green on empty homes also appears to ignore Eric Pickles’ major restrictions on the use of Empty Dwelling Management Orders, justified entirely on his belief that they interfere with the rights of private property owners to keep their homes empty
unreasonably.
But if anyone wants to start a debate on housing policy and the impact of the coalition so
far, the summary would be a brilliant way to get an argument going.
There could also be an entertaining evening for housing obsessives devising similar scores for the Labour government……
Categories
Spinning like a top
Spinning like a top, Housing Minister Grant Shapps is such a busy media bee at the moment that I’m tempted to think that there may be a Ministerial reshuffle in the
air. Following his Twitter feed is a bit like being on a guided tour of the country’s radio stations with the occasional TV spot thrown in.
But this week he made an attack on the media that caught my interest because he is such a
media-savvy kind of guy. Speaking at a Conference of the excellent Homeless Link, he made a big thing about the media’s lack of interest in homelessness. Referring to his announcement of £42m funding for additional hostel beds, according to the Guardian he said “It’s almost impossible to get the outside world to take any notice of homelessness at all. You won’t have seen this information in a single national newspaper this morning and if I have a criticism of homelessness in this country, it’s not about all of you, it’s about them lot out there who just don’t seem to care about it…….I suspect even if I did press release it, no-one outside this room would give a damn.”
Taking up his theme, The Guardian conducted an on-line poll (still open if you want to join in) which so far has 84% of voters saying yes – the media fails to represent the issues around homelessness and rough sleeping – against only 16% saying no – the media carries stories about homelessness and housing need.
As I’m in training to become a curmudgeon, my response was to disagree with the question – the issue is more about the quality than the quantity of coverage.
There are lots of stories about street homelessness, especially in the run-in to Xmas,
but the imagery is invariably the same, cardboard cities and shop doorways in the Strand feature highly. It is good that both Shapps and the otherwise inept mayor Johnson have shown an interest in and made commitments about street homelessness. However, we will have to wait and see if they actually deliver, and a cynic might argue that it is the very visibility of street homelessness in some parts of London, and the imminent arrival of the world’s media for the Olympics, that have pushed it up the agenda.
But even on this aspect of homelessness, poor media scrutiny means that there is no
contextualisation of Shapp’s announcement and no analysis of how his new sum of money for hostels compares with the large amounts already lost to the homelessness sector due to cuts in Supporting People programmes and cuts in local support for homelessness projects.
Most homelessness is not very visible and the reasons for it are complex. Many homeless people have difficult back-stories but the underlying reason for homelessness is not social pathology: it is the housing shortage and the lack of access to affordable homes and, where necessary, support. Increasingly – and the blame here falls on some people within the industry and not just the Government or the media – homelessness is described as just one feature of welfare dependency, the failure of individuals within the system rather than the failure of the system itself. Worse, homeless applicants are characterised as ne’er-do-wells looking to exploit soft liberal rules, the undeserving poor that should be contrasted with the deserving poor who ‘do the right thing’ by working and sitting on housing waiting lists.
These simplistic characterisations are invariably wrong but they form this Government’s central narrative to justify welfare and housing reform. The assertion that allocating social housing to homeless people has somehow created housing estates where there are dangerous concentrations of poverty, dysfunctionality and criminality has allowed the Government to get away with making large holes in the homelessness safety net. Homelessness is rising rapidly, and I suspect the reason is not a sudden increase in fecklessness.
So I agree with Grant Shapps about the poor quality of media coverage. They love their scapegoats and their attacks on the feckless. But when he uses phrases like they just don’t seem to care about it and they don’t give a damn, he should try looking in a mirror.
On a couple of occasions since we launched Red Brick a year ago we have agreed with Housing Minister Grant Shapps about something he has said. Only a couple mind you!
One was when Shapps made a sensible pronouncement about the need for house prices to stabilise in real terms or even decline gradually to improve affordability. He said he wanted a housing market that is more ‘rational’ than it currently is.
It would be helpful if he now took a similar view about private sector rents. Shelter’s latest research, which got good media coverage this morning, for example here and here, shows that average private rents are unaffordable to ordinary families in over half of local authority areas in England. Typical rents are more than 35% of average take home pay, one of the widely accepted definitions of affordability.
Shelter is calling for urgent action to stabilise the rental market and to bring rents more into line with average earnings. Affordability still varies hugely around the country, with parts of the north significantly more affordable (or less unaffordable?) than the south. Rents in London come close to justifying the phrase ‘out of control’. Shelter’s view is that families are increasingly priced out of home ownership, cannot get access to affordable social housing, and now cannot find affordable private rented accommodation, and are being squeezed by changes to local housing allowance, so their only option is to cut down on other expenses and in particular on consumer purchases and food.
Shapps’ only response was to say that the government stopped Labour’s imposition of more ‘red tape’ on the sector, and he offers no hope or even an aspiration that the rising trend will be stabilised or reversed. Given that over 40% of homes in the sector fail to meet the decent homes standard, tenants often get very poor value for money as well as insecure terms. Rising rents and better returns mean there is growing interest in buy to let, which is adding to the difficulties faced by first time buyers facing mortgage famine and high deposit requirements.
Over the past decade there has been some hope that the increasing supply of rental properties would eventually begin to satisfy demand, thereby stabilising prices. There is now no hope of this happening in any foreseeable period. The Government’s conviction that cuts to the Local housing Allowance would lead to rent reductions is proving to be complete fantasy.
The only real alternative is some kind of state intervention, but there are genuine fears that any measure of rent control might reduce confidence in the market and make things even worse by choking off new supply as potential landlords who need to buy with a
mortgage would see their hoped-for returns reduced.
There is an urgent need for government to pay more attention to the sector. Are there mechanisms by which rents could be constrained without impacting unduly on supply? Could rent restraint be linked to the achievement of decency standards? Do we want to control the transfer of owner occupied homes into private renting, and especially into multiple occupation? Are there ways of ensuring that new investment in private renting is channeled into supporting new build instead? In a period of huge cuts, what more can be
done to improve monitoring and enforcement against rogue landlords?
There are more questions than answers, as Johnny Nash sang, but he was wise to add ‘and the more I find out the less I know’.
The Welfare Reform Bill returns to Parliament this week and this may be the last
opportunity to kill or seriously change this unpleasant measure.
To mention just 2 of the proposals:
- The new benefits cap will heavily penalise larger families and those living in parts of the country with higher rents.
- The plans to introduce a penalty for under occupancy will mean that any tenants deemed to have one or more spare bedrooms will see benefits slashed.
Congratulations to the National Housing Federation for organising a National Welfare Week of Action starting today. There are a lot of proposed activities during the week.
Each day has its own theme and many of the activities are aimed at lobbying MPs. See here for more information.
David Orr, the Federation’s Chief Executive, said: ‘The very people the government should be helping during these tough economic times: the disabled, foster carers and families – are exactly the people who will be hammered by these measures. Hard up families will be left with a stark choice if these proposals go ahead: either move out of your home to a cheaper area or stay put and live in hardship or debt.’
‘We believe these reforms will be hugely damaging to community life and will see people priced out of their homes, away from local schools, and their support networks. With time running out to influence ministers, this week is the chance for anyone who is concerned about these proposals to stand up and be counted.’
Red Brick would urge our readers to spread the word and join in wherever possible.
Categories
The New Rochdale Pioneers
Even though there were many small co-operatives in existence before the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers was founded in 1844, it was their establishment of the Rochdale Principles that is credited with being the foundation of the Co-operative Movement, especially in the retail sector.
Now Rochdale Council and its arms-legth management organisation, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, are planning a new pioneering initiative in the town. They are beginning a formal consultation with tenants on a proposed stock transfer to a unique new
organisation – a housing mutual co-owned by tenants and employees – which they
say ‘draws on the timeless co-operative and mutual principles developed in Rochdale in the 1840s’.
Co-operation is in the air at the moment. If the Rochdale proposal goes ahead and transfer takes place as planned in 2012, it would coincide with the UN’s International
Year of Co-operatives. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says “Cooperatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility.”
Next week, Labour & Co-operative MP Jonathan Reynolds is presenting a ten minute rule bill, the Co-operative Housing (Tenure) Bill 2011, to the House of Commons. The Bill would enshrine in English law the legal principle that the right of occupation of a dwelling can arise through membership of a housing co-operative which owns property rather than
solely through the grant of a tenancy by a superior (feudal) landlord.
According to David Rogers, the Executive Director of CDS Co-operatives, ‘ Jonathan Reynolds’s Bill will overturn over 1,000 years of feudal land law history which has its
roots in the Dark Ages from whence the only way to gain occupation rights was either as freeholder (of the Crown) or as tenant of a superior feudal landlord: a history which has led to the bi-polar approach to housing ownership and rental as the two only available tenures.‘ He believes that the new tenure would open the door to new institutional investment, especially from Pension Funds, offering long-term investors an attractive secure and assured rate of return.
Mutual housing is one of the few areas of housing policy where there is a degree of consensus at present. The government has made strong statements in support of mutual ownership because it fits the big society, and co-operatives have long had support on the left and especially amongst those who support tenant control and the widest possible definition of public housing (ie not just the state).
In addition to the strengths of tenant and worker control, models like the Rochdale mutual also have the advantage of being technically outside the public sector in terms of borrowing. Ridiculous as it is, Rochdale Council borrowing money to build homes that will eventually make a profit from rents is ‘defined’ as being a bad thing because it is public borrowing. However, a mutual organisation borrowing money and using exactly the same resources for exactly the same purpose is defined as a good thing because it is not classified as public borrowing.
If this fortunate confluence of the political and the technical creates an opportunity for more homes to be built that will meet housing need – and especially one that will unlock institutional investment – we should go for it.
Categories
‘Affordable rent’ chaos
It was all too clear when providers were asked to put in bids to provide new homes under
the ‘affordable rent’ programme that the timetable was tight, the risks were high, and that there was a lot of confusion about who would actually have influence over issues such as rent levels.
Housing associations, in particular, had hugely complex assessments to make of the financial implications for their organisations. Subsidy per unit would be tiny and associations would have to use up a high percentage of their private borrowing capacity to make the schemes work. Many were extremely concerned about the levels of rent that would be required, which could be up to 80% of market rents, and the fact that they would be completely unaffordable to their normal profile of new tenants. Privately, quite a few were outraged that a share of their re-lets of social rented homes would have to go into the ‘affordable rent’ pool to fund the developments.
During the period when the bids were being prepared and put in, it became obvious that many local authorities were being bypassed and that quite a few of them were not on the ball and influencing what was happening. There were genuine problems for housing associations, who might have been looking at schemes in a large number of different council areas, often dealing with indicative figures for future years and not real schemes on specific sites.
It must be said that some housing associations, but not all, have tried hard to make some
sense of the scheme, appreciating that the scheme will work less badly in some places
than in others and trying to keep rents, especially for family homes, down wherever possible. It has been said by the mayor in London that the average rent will be 65% of market but there seem to be no published official statistics to see how this is calculated.
A little late in the day in some cases, councils have realised that new development in their
district was being determined in confidential contract negotiations between individual providers and the Homes and Communities Agency, and that final decisions would be made by Ministers, no doubt taking due account of the political implications.
There are now some unholy rows going on as councils see sites that they thought would produce some units of social rented housing going for ‘affordable rent’ and they are
sticking to their guns and insisting that rent levels should come down. This might then make individual schemes unviable. Some are demanding that re-lets of existing social rented homes should not be taken out of the genuinely affordable housing pool just to finance new expensive homes. Providers thought they had deals with Government which may now unravel and are unclear what impact this might have on their total borrowing. Councils may face a choice between having homes that are far too expensive or having developments drop out of the scheme altogether.
It is not entirely clear who has the final say. Councils think they have a veto. Providers
thought it was a done deal and won’t do schemes they think are not viable. The HCA is trying to negotiate a brand new scheme with a lot of risk under strict political instructions. And CLG Ministers have the final sign-off on the schemes. There have already been
significant delays.
Perhaps Grant Shapps should tweet less and manage his portfolio more effectively?
Polls and surveys show that most homeowners are able to manage their mortgage and other housing costs reasonably comfortably, and many are sitting on a potential capital gain which they may be able to access later in their lives to fund their retirement or
care.
But a minority struggle to meet their monthly outgoings and live in fear of an interest rate rise or redundancy or reduced hours at work that could tip them over the financial edge.
Getting good and – crucially – independent advice as early as possible is important for
these families. The National Homelessness Advice Service, a partnership between Shelter and Citizens Advice, is a crucial resource. It provides local authority front-line staff with
specialist support, information and expertise so that advisers can in turn provide accurate and timely housing advice to residents, and it has a specialist team of mortgage debt caseworkers who can advise on homeowners in debt.
For some, better management of their debts and bills can make all the difference and help them stay in their home. But for others, homeownership becomes unsustainable and there comes a point when a decision needs to be made to give up the home and get out of the debt before an enforced repossession takes place.
Research for the charity by the University of York has explored the various routes open to
struggling homeowners and the support provided by lenders, especially to help people to sell their properties voluntarily. The process, known as assisted voluntary sale (AVS) is a relatively new development in the sector and is not available from all lenders, but can deliver positive results that can benefit both lenders and borrowers. If it is a suitable option, it can enable the homeowner to keep control of the sale process and provide time to calculate the financial pros and cons and consider options for alternative accommodation, including if necessary a local authority homelessness application.
Shelter and NHAS have now published a good practice guide to AVS to help people and their advisers through the process. There can be few harder decisions for a family to make and the guide goes step by step through the options available and the factors to take into account.
If economic circumstances worsen, unemployment rises further, or there is a sudden lurch in interest rates, this guide might prove to be an increasingly valuable tool.
A horrible cough and cold picked up in Liverpool meant a weekend with a box of lemsip, a
Henning Mankell novel and watching lots of football without feeling guilty. It was an error to switch on the computer and risk my temperature going even higher because the name Grant Shapps appeared in several places.
We are used to the parade of statistics about social housing claiming to show that it is
full of benefit dependent scroungers, caused so we are told by the policy of allocating housing according to housing need. Having set up the Aunt Sally to throw sticks at, the Tories are feeling confident enough to take more steps in their campaign to end social
housing. Westminster has elbowed its way to the front with their apparently reasonable new allocations policy giving significantly higher priority to employed people. Shapps was quick to congratulate them, saying that he plans to extend the policy nationally.
Westminster’s cabinet member for housing, Jonathan Glanz, said the scheme “acknowledges and rewards” people who are “contributing to the economy…. We have
got so many people not working that it gives worklessness an attractiveness as a way of life.” The ex-Guardian journalist David Henke has shown what the implications of rents policies might be in changing the the social composition of Lady Porter-land – a long term ambition of the Council – and Guthrie McKie, Labour’s housing spokesperson, said: “The Council is shifting its housing failures on to the most vulnerable people in our community. Due to its failure to provide sufficient social housing, the Council is doctoring its allocation policy… The Council is hell-bent on turning Westminster into a ‘no go’ area for the poor and low-income families.”
Shapps popped up in several papers, including the Telegraph where he said: “Up until now, access to council housing has too often been blocked for hard-working families who do the right thing. So I’m determined to end the something-for-nothing culture and replace it with a system that actively recognises individuals who work hard and play by the rules.”
A conspiracy theorist, which I am normally not, might see a link between this and the other housing story given major prominence in advance of the Tory Party Conference – giving new impetus to the Right to Buy by massively increasing discounts. The link is that people on benefits are highly unlikely to exercise the Right to Buy.
It has been a feature of council housing since the RTB was introduced in 1980 that, as council homes are bought by tenants who work, the proportion of remaining tenants who are economically inactive rises. Many buyers still live in the same home on the same estate with the same social composition, and others have sold on to new occupiers who could afford to buy them out. But the headline statistics show that council tenants are less likely to be in work, therefore more reform is justified because the tenure has failed.
Shapps’ thumbs were itching to tell us all about it on Twitter: “The right to buy is back” proclaimed The Great Builder. And he provided a helpful link to a CLG webpage of questions and answers.
You might think given everything that has previously been said about council tenants that there is no-one left, apart from Frank Dobson, with anything other than housing benefit to live on. But to justify the new RTB policy the Government has to employ reverse spin: suddenly there are plenty of tenants earning money through work who may have a bit to
spend. CLG tell us that “38% of social tenants are well-off enough not to need Housing Benefit and over 800,000 tenants are in full-time work. Nearly 60% of social housing tenants who are couples with children do not claim housing benefit. Therefore many social tenants will be able to meet the cost of the mortgage after allowing for the discount.”
Pass the lemsip. Perhaps Kurt Wallender has the answers.
Categories
Musical tenancies
Labour Housing Group Executive member Graham Martin moved the housing resolution passed unanimously yesterday at Labour Conference in Liverpool.
The resolution notes the growing housing crisis that will be created by the Government’s policies, falling housing starts, huge cuts to the social housebuilding programme, a jump in homelessness, and the rising costs of housing benefit caused by increased dependence on the private rented sector and escalating rents.
Specifically it calls for a shift in financing of private landlords away from buying existing homes, causing unfair competition with first time buyers, towards investment in new properties which would add to the stock and boost growth.
It welcomes the initiative by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to extend the tax on bankers’ bonuses to invest in new affordable homes. It calls for the defence of the rights of social tenants and the delivery of more social housing to be campaigning priorities for Labour in opposition.
In his speech, Graham warned that the Government’s policies run the risk of triggering ‘an
avalanche of mortgage repossessions’. In reference to private renting, he said ‘It is like the game musical chairs but now it is musical tenancies and as your private sector tenancy comes to an end you have to go and move. And as you play musical tenancies, your child has to play musical schools and musical doctors…. And if you are unlucky enough to need housing benefit to help pay the rent, hey presto this government has taken half the empty homes away. And now this government thinks it is such a good idea they are trying to bring in musical tenancies for council and housing association tenants.’
‘Our children need stable homes, strong communities need stable homes, and what is going on is a way to break communities.’