Red Brick was not the only one to comment on the government’s social mobility strategy. Simon Jenkins in the Guardian also had a lot to say on the subject, but reserved much of his venom for council housing, saying: “It’s security of housing tenure that impedes economic migration and ossifies divides.”
This annoyed our guest bloggerMonimbo, who writes:
The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins appears to place most of the blame for Britain’s lack of social mobility at the doors of social housing, and the security it provides (6 April). This is by no means the first time that social housing has been blamed for society’s ills, but Jenkins excels in attaching so much prominence to security of tenure and the availability of housing benefit. Yet his own article shows some of the perversity of his argument. While calling for more mixed communities, he decries the fact that a well-paid trade union leader can still occupy social housing. Isn’t Bob Crow an example of the kind of person needed by the ‘integrated mixed communities’ that Jenkins says he wants?
But the real problem is the fault he finds with security of tenure. Whereas private tenants can be evicted after six months, social tenants can only be evicted through the courts, though of course they can and do move of their own accord. It is ironic that most proponents of reducing security, which is a highly valued feature of social housing, would never dream of applying the same remedy to themselves. Take secure tenure away and the result would be many more of the nightmare situations which Jenkins describes. Yes, these conditions do exist in some unpopular estates where tenants vote with their feet and there is little sense of community, but these are in a minority. Just consider the impact of higher turnover on the local state schools which he mentions, if pupils living in their catchment areas were forced to move regularly in the interests of ‘mobility’.
If Jenkins is unconvinced, let him ask about the effects of the highly mobile population that tends to occupy many council properties that were sold under the right to buy, and are now owned by absentee landlords. In many cases, these are rented out to transient workers who move in and out and have no stake in the area. Often poorly managed, they can be the focus of local problems and yet local authorities have fewer powers to tackle them than they do with households in secure tenancies.
While Jenkins is right to say there are not enough mixed communities, he doesn’t say how ending security of tenure would remedy this. Nor does he recognise the intense pressure put on social landlords since the 1980s, through the failure to build enough homes and the need to concentrate ever poorer families in those available. He calls social housing ‘subsidised’ but which tenure isn’t? – the last government spent over £1 billion annually subsidising home owners, for example, while council housing rents now pay about £100 million in surpluses back to the Treasury.
For half a century council housing catered for a range of income groups, and many of those struggling to become home owners would welcome it now – if there was sufficient available. Of the 1.7 million households on council waiting lists, many are private tenants with very limited security. Government figures show that fewer than one in five social tenants would prefer to be a homeowner; the number preferring to be an insecure private tenant is of course far lower.
The links between bad housing and ill-health always seem obvious to anyone who has worked in the housing sector. Although controlling the spread of disease was a major factor in the surge of interest in the housing conditions of the working classes a century ago, even the advent of ‘joined-up policy making’ in modern times has failed to establish the case that spending on improving housing could be an important factor in preventing ill-health and reducing the requirement to spend on health care.
If your job involves being in and out of other people’s homes you tend to see the effects of bad housing daily but it still seems to be a poorly evidenced area of policy. It’s good then that there has been more interest in this topic recently.
A recent report by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology pulls together a lot of evidence from multiple sources and shows in particular the importance of the Decent Homes programme. Conditions linked to non-decent housing include: cardiovascular diseases; respiratory diseases; rheumatoid arthritis; depression and anxiety; nausea and diarrhoea; infections; allergic symptoms; hypothermia; physical injury from accidents; food poisoning. The report also points out that “Proposals to stop providing social tenancies for life may also decrease security of tenure which could lead to an increase in mental health problems”. Overall, the report says, the detrimental effect of poor housing costs the Health Service over £600m a year.
Yesterday, Shelter Cymru published research conducted by themselves and the Building Research Establishment (BRE) which estimated that poor housing costs the NHS in Wales around £67m a year. It calculates the costs to the NHS of treating accidents and illnesses caused by problems in the home such as unsafe steps, electrical hazards, excessive cold, damp and mould. If you include other disbenefits of poor housing, such as children’s poor educational attainment and reduced life chances, the wider bill to society is estimated to be even greater at around £168m a year. Shelter say this is the first time a definitive financial cost has been placed on poor housing, emphasising that the economic case for improving bad housing in Wales is as strong as the moral case. They also point to the progress made in housing under Aneurin Bevan, when housing policy was firmly located in the health department.
The report estimates that the payback time in health care savings of bringing all housing up to acceptable condition would be 22 years, but that in some areas it would be much less, for example investment in addressing dangerous stairs would be paid back in 5.7 years.
Taking the argument one step further, the resident-controlled housing association WECH has done ground-breaking research showing the beneficial effect that empowerment can have on well-being, thereby reducing ill-health. Their research shows that, although WECH residents experience high levels of deprivation, they are happier and more engaged because they collectively own their estates and feel a much stronger sense of belonging to their neighbourhood.
As Labour embarks on its housing policy review, it will be important to avoid a silo approach to housing policy. The external benefits of housing investment deserve to be at the top of the agenda.
It looks like Boris is going to be able to boast that he hit his target of 50,000 affordable homes built over the course of his term.
Of course, we can point out that many of those homes were in the pipeline from Ken’s days anyway; he stretched the length of his original pledge from three years to four years; and that much of the money came from the Labour government’s investment in housing during the recession. But, the claim will pass muster and get in the press without much criticism.
He’s got a problem however with the next four years as he prepares for the election campaign. It’s going to be very obvious that under this government affordable housing in London is going to plummet. Housing associations are putting in their bids now for how many homes they’ll build over the course of the next four years. By late this year, we’ll know the four-year programmes of London’s biggest housing associations, be able to add them up and see (I predict) a fairly grim picture for affordable house building in the capital.
The current profile for new affordable homes is in the graph below. The government’s programme won’t pull it out of this nosedive.
With supply only coming from housing associations, the Mayor will struggle to explain how he’ll increase those numbers and from where. And worse for a Mayor who made so much of family housing, we’re likely to see very few larger homes in those figures.
This will be an open goal for Ken Livingstone. And Ken will run heavily on the fact that the new ‘affordable housing’ isn’t actually affordable in many parts of London, especially where there is most housing need.
So, what will Boris do? He can campaign and lobby for more cash/help for London. He may seek to portray himself as the one who can get concessions from central government, in a way Ken can’t. Or, he can distance himself from the government, criticise the policy and join the voices showing the damage being done in the capital. He has plenty of form on this, but will a belated criticism work? The one thing I can’t see is him defending government policy and making the case for it.
The task for Ken will be to explain how he’d do better given the policies of the current government and the state of the public finances. And if he wins he’ll actually have to do something about it.
As one who rails against the constant mischaracterisation of council housing and council tenants in the media (and by some housing professionals), watching a serious but entertaining history of council housing was a joy.
Michael Collins’ ‘The Great Estate: The Rise and Fall of the Council House’ not only traced the history of council housing from the building of the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch in 1893 to the demolition of the Heygate Estate in 2011 but did so through a riveting mix of analysis, archive footage and personal histories. It’s a highly recommended watch for anyone with an interest in housing, available on i-player.
I thought Collins made some excellent points in a thread running throughout the programme about the importance of creating neighbourhoods and not just estates of homes, what he called the sense of belonging, and his description of Aneurin Bevan’s concept of a classless new society based on council housing. His criticism of the government’s move towards temporary tenancies was all the more powerful in this context – it will destroy, as he said, the sense of permanence that gives people a reason to make an investment in their homes and estates.
Jimmy McGovern made the point forcefully – despite being a tenant, ‘it was our house not the councils, that’s why we looked after it…… Just because it’s a council house doesn’t mean it’s not yours.’ Tell that to the government and the modern providers who see tenants as transitory occupiers of their (the landlords’) homes.
I also agree with Collins that utopian architecture, government subsidies for high rise, and jerry building caused huge problems, helped spoil the reputation of council estates as places to live and failed the ‘sense of belonging’ test. I would also add bad housing management to the list.
Where I depart from Collins is in his analysis of the impact of the 1977 homelessness legislation. It is not accurate to say it ‘jettisoned policies that favoured locals’ or that it led to the rehousing of ‘itinerant’ people. The vast majority of people rehoused were on local waiting lists and qualified under local connection rules, and having worked as a senior manager in one of the boroughs with the greatest numbers of homeless people, I think his claims that the system was abused are wildly exaggerated.
Of course there were changes on the demand side – as home ownership became an option for many, and as private renting contracted – but for council housing these were less important than what happened to supply. Collins says rightly that Thatcher passed the ‘death sentence’ on council housing, but he does it only in passing. It was the collapse in supply, starting after the 1976 IMF crisis but hugely intensified under Thatcher, that changed the nature of council housing and ended Bevan’s dream. The sector was made to become, as some Tories acknowledged then and some still do today, a residual tenure moving rapidly towards the American model, and with the same consequences.
Nor is it all bad today, or even normally bad. There are millions of people happily living in council homes at affordable rents, with the security of tenure that helps give them that crucial sense of belonging. And there are millions more who would be only too delighted to receive an offer to join them.
See another blogger’s view of the programme – Jules Birch of Inside Housing – here.
Housing professionals and campaigners definitely know their onions. I’ve been to a lot of seminars and events recently. The standard of debate is always exceptionally high, as is the level of technical knowledge and evidence to back up people’s point of view.
At each one I’m reminded more and more just how much housing policy there is out there – from land taxes, to land auctions, to further radical planning reforms, to different funding models etc.
But, as contributors often point out many of these ideas never see the light of day and that’s because of a lack of political will or leadership. Politicians, the housing pros bemoan, are too afraid to challenge the central tenets of homeownership, of social housing or whatever to solve the housing problem.
Let me stir up a bit of a hornet’s nest and defend the politicians.
The politicians lack any space in which to move on housing policy. Even the attempt to open up the debate finds them lambasted, even before they get near policy (for political balance, here and here). For people with jobs reliant on public opinion, who are responsible directly to the general public that’s a tough place to be. The housing sector will wait forever for a politician to strike out on their own.
Those who don’t rely directly on the electorate need to do more of the heavy lifting.
Unless more space and debate about the fundamentals is created beyond the policy roundtables, the politicians are stuck where they are. Think tanks need to champion radical solutions and provide solutions to how those ideas can get traction with the public. Campaigning organisations should target public opinion, the media and civil society in a more committed and constructive way. Then politicians can speak up without being outliers on the edges of a conservative debate, where they are easy to pick off by the right-wing attack dogs in the press and government.
Reports, articles and seminars which end with lists and lists of recommendations for the government are not going to get anywhere. There is no lack of ideas or suggestions for the policy reforms, in Whitehall, ministerial teams and shadow ministerial teams – they read the think tank articles and go to the seminars too.
We also need to be more positive. Simply pedalling a narrative of despair about how no progress is ever made and how the system’s been bust for decades, just creates the impression that all is hopeless in housing. We need to make a better case that change is achievable. Don’t get me wrong – people need to be made more aware of them problems but also need to know that radical change is within our capacities and not a punt in the dark.
The answer to the housing crisis can only be political, it’ll never be technical, but the responsibility for political leadership extends beyond the politicians.
Then the shelves of unused and untried housing policy, developed over the decades by passionate and intelligent people, who understand housing and the people who lose out, might just get a look in.
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Auld Lang Syne
The eighteenth century French philosopher Voltaire once observed “We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation”. If the new Scottish Labour Manifesto isn’t quite the new Scottish Enlightenment, it is certainly enlightened compared to anything we hear from the government in Westminster.
The emphasis in the Manifesto is on jobs and achieving greater prosperity in Scotland. But it also contains important housing commitments and an emphasis on affordable housing and mixed communities that has gone missing in the world of Pickles and Shapps (my thesaurus tells me the antonym of enlightenment is ignorance. Seems appropriate.)
The basic tenet of the housing policies in the Manifesto is that many Scots are anxious to obtain and retain secure affordable homes.
For example, on homelessness, it says that a Labour government would work towards meeting the target that all unintentionally homeless people are offered a secure tenancy by 2012 and would provide guidance on the interpretation of homelessness and housing legislation, in stark contrast to the approach in England of removing rights to secure tenancies from homeless people.
A mix of policies are proposed to assist people across the tenures. Labour will review the effectiveness of schemes to help home owners facing repossession, strengthen pre-action protocols, introduce First Foot, a new mortgage indemnity guarantee scheme that aims to reduce deposits to 5 or 10 %, and set up an infrastructure fund to encourage private housing development to build more homes to satisfy demand. New building should meet a Scottish Housing Quality Standard and there will be consultation on raising building standards especially in relation to energy efficiency. There is a strong target to end fuel poverty by 2016 and investment in community and household renewables, such as solar panels and community heat and power schemes, will provide a new revenue stream for housing associations, co-operatives and local authorities through the feed-in tariff.
The Manifesto says Labour will encourage responsible investment in the private rented sector and tighten landlord registration schemes to root out rogue landlords
Labour would establish a Taskforce to strengthen the role of local authorities and housing associations in increasing supply, especially of affordable homes. There is strong support for community-based housing associations and housing co-operatives, in particular in their role as ‘community anchors’, and the remit of the Scottish Investment Bank and Co-operative Development Scotland to will be extended to include housing. Social housing lettings will be reviewed to offer more support for vulnerable people and to ensure sustainable communities. And a Housing Advisory Service would be established for tenants and homeowners and new Housing Tribunal set up.
Scottish Labour Leader Iain Gray introduced the Manifesto ‘Fighting for what really matters’ by saying
“Scottish Labour believes that the foundation for a strong community is fairness. Jobs, opportunity and prosperity must be spread more widely throughout our communities – to improve housing, to regenerate deprived communities, to support the most vulnerable and to lift people out of poverty.”
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More questions than answers
CLG press releases these days are strong on message and weak on information. Yesterday’s big announcement, which led to Grant Shapps tweeting every few minutes about yet another local radio interview he was doing, sounded clever and appealing. The press statement said “Housing Minister Grant Shapps today offered tenants a Cashback deal worth billions to take control of their own homes.”
Wow. Billions! And what does the scheme involve? Well it “will allow residents to take more control of their repairs budgets for their homes, for example carry out their own DIY, or commission it locally and pocket any savings made. Cash they could use however they want – for example, towards a deposit on their own house. With maintenance and repair costing £4billion a year, the move could see a bonanza for small businesses. The Government wants all landlords to offer their tenants the chance to manage more of their repairs budgets – and will consult on bringing forward changes to regulations to give all tenants the option to request it from their landlord.”
Does the press statement answer any of the obvious questions about the scheme? Well, no. Not one. Here’s my starter for 10.
- Will all repairs be eligible? Many repairs involve a statutory requirement on the landlord, for example in relation to the structure, dampness, ventilation, electrics and, perhaps above all, gas. So far as I am aware, the landlord cannot devolve these duties and any other health and safety responsibilities to the tenant.
- Who can the tenant employ to do the repairs? Could they for example do electrical or gas works themselves unsupervised or give work to someone unqualified or to someone without insurance? Could they use someone who illegally evades VAT or tax?
- If the tenant fails to get the repair done properly, or it needs to be rectified by the landlord, who pays?
- The press statement talks about painting work and carpentry work – but aren’t the vast majority of these jobs, if they are internal, already the tenants’ responsibility under the tenancy agreement?
- What is in the proposal that can’t be done by landlords already? And does localism take a back seat when there is a juicy announcement to make?
- What evidence has been collected about current innovations in repairs to inform this decision? There have been huge changes in repairs procurement in recent years, presumably some research and evidence gathering has been done.
- Of the £4bn spent on social housing repairs and maintenance each year, £1000 per home, how much is it estimated could be devolved to tenants, and how does Shapps know it will be ‘billions’.
- Shapps says “Doing your own DIY or choosing a local handyman to do the work – will allow tenants to pocket any savings they make.” Where is the evidence that a tenant can get a job done cheaper than the council’s contractor? How much will they be allowed to ‘pocket’?
- How will the scheme work – will tenants receive a grant from the landlord or payment against invoices and receipts?
- Who will check jobs for quality and safety? Will tenants in homes that need a lot of repairs get more?
In the words of Johnny Nash –
“There are more questions than answers
And the more I find out the less I know.”
A comment by Tim Williams on my previous post, I thought worth putting up here in full. More from me shortly on the need for the political space needed to allow for change:
I’m the ‘colleague’ Tony referred to who wrote about housing in Sydney on my blog. I was a special advisor to David Miliband on housing, regen and local government and advised all subsequent housing ministers on some aspect of housing or other. So my fingers are all over this. Essentially, the housing department had no control over Treasury and we confused housing need (real enough but not scientifically quantified) with housing demand(which was being stoked up by over-lax policies by Treasury and under-regulation by its agencies such as the FSA). So housing need was growing because housing demand was being whipped on by too low interest rates, rising house prices preventing lower income and younger folk from accessing homes! Then the house-builders’ business model kicked in as they effectively constrained supply in order to keep their margins up. Oh and then planning and environmental policies inhibited the supply of land to said builders which further limited housing numbers and raised prices.
Not all of this applies in Australia. The demography is real enough with population growing. I think management of the financial institutions has been better in Oz though I suspect the federal treasurer is about to raise interest rates (already 4 points ahead of the UK’s flatlining level) to choke off demand. House prices are already stabilising it seems to me. Despite the scary graphs I think they might just have enough policy and brain to fend off a drop of about 15% which the UK has seen in prices. Maybe we are about to see that most mystical of beasts in housing: the soft landing.
Having said that, what goes up must come down and soft landings rarely happen. The deeper point is of course what did governments think they were doing by enabling the market to flood society with such cheap money. Centre left governments thought they were helping poor people access equity – as well as wanting to be as pro the aspirational or as they say in Australia, the ‘battlers’. There was a politics to home-ownership on the centre left as well as the right, in the UK, the US and Australia.
A space should have opened up after the Global Financial Crisis to provide alternative tenures and justify them politically. Tony and Toby (now of Shelter) will know I pushed this as an advisor, as did Tony. More tangibly I don’t think the silly, easy money of the noughties is ever coming back to housing finance. That is the view of many in the game and look at the moribund state of the house-builders three and a half years on from the start of the crisis. Zombies.
So new models (rented, shared ownership, cooperatives) have to be found anyway to deliver supply. So where’s the Labor/Labour Party with a narrative about this?
In Australia the Labor government gave a huge stimulus to the social housing and private rented market by their economic package to fend off recession. That worked economically amazingly well though they get no political credit because dumped the prime minister who did that (without explaining very well why). It has had the perverse(?) incentive of persuading mums and dads to get further into property speculation (via owning a few private rented units) though it has not created the conditions for a high quality, big, private rented sector, attracting institutional money of the kind we need, I think. It has however transformed community housing providers and some of them are on their way to being big UK style RSLs.
Advice? Raise interest rates sooner rather than later. Incentivise private rented. Syphon off economic demand from the capital cities. Lower entry level costs for housebuilders so that small guys can get in to shake up the market. Think through the brown-field-greenfield issue and be more flexible about building on the latter. Develop a narrative about the benefits of alternatives to ownership, helped by the fact easy money is not coming back. Read my blog!
There was no pleasure to be taken in watching Nick Clegg flounder his way through yesterday failing to convince anyone that the government was serious about improving social mobility. I suspect he once believed in it, but like other LibDem ministers who used to have something serious to say on the subject – Sarah Teather, Andrew Stunnell and Steve Webb to name but three – he has sold his principles at the knock-down price of a Ministerial car and an AV referendum.
The social mobility strategy should face prosecution under the Trades Description Act. As a strategy it brings together existing policies on education, welfare, employment, housing and the rest into a patchwork quilt – but there is no stitching to make it a coherent whole.
Nothing will be done about growing inequality, and the relationship between inequality, social mobility and good social outcomes is simply not explored. Nothing will be done about inheritance and nothing will be done about people being able to buy privilege, so the rich private school elite will maintain its grip. Nothing will be done to reverse the cuts to the services that give poorer people some hope, like Sure Start and the Education Maintenance Allowance. And for Clegg to focus on changes to internships shows how threadbare this strategy is.
The document points out that housing makes up 42% of household wealth but there is no analysis of the role that housing might play in promoting greater social mobility and equality of opportunity. The same old Duncan-Smith-isms are trotted out: social housing somehow causes deprivation, there is a culture of dependency, people aspire to be home owners, and all the rest. The only thing I can see that might make any difference to social mobility is the (already announced) set of proposals to improve the geographic mobility of social tenants, but even that is outweighed by the failure to address supply.
Living in a decent warm affordable and secure home with enough space provides the platform on which all other opportunities are built. Health inequalities and educational inequalities are closely linked to housing opportunities. Children will find it hard to achieve if they have faced homelessness or overcrowding or living in cold damp conditions. Many of the government’s housing policies will make it harder for children and young people to succeed. For example, housing benefit will cover less and less of the rent, increasing real poverty and the risk of homelessness for many. Fewer tenants will have long term security in their home, the place where they build their lives.
The final proof, if any more was needed, that this is not a serious strategy, was provided by Clegg himself in an article in yesterday’s Telegraph. Writing jointly with Iain Duncan Smith, they say that the strategy is aimed at squeezed middle-class parents who are “working hard to make the best life possible for their children”. They go on: “Most of them are not poor, and certainly don’t want to rely on welfare payments. But nor are they rich enough to insulate their children against life’s misfortunes.”
Mr Clegg should note that there is more than a slight difference between insulating the middle classes and promoting social mobility.
Categories
Yes, Grant, it is hypocrisy
The new financial year marks the introduction of some of the government’s most contentious housing policies, so you would expect government ministers to be focused on the major changes and their impact on millions of people. So what have Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps been up to, what are their key messages to the nation at this crucial time?
Well both have been extremely excited by the fact that some councils sent people to the Local Government Chronicle’s children’s services awards dinner at council expense. Personally, I don’t like such functions, all that dressing up in dark lounge suits and posh frocks, and think they should be held in a dusty town hall somewhere with municipal nibbles and compulsory hair shirts. But the ministers spotted a headline in the making: according to the Daily Mail, Pickles “condemned the councils for ‘pleading poverty’ while using public money to ‘swill champagne’ at London’s five-star Grosvenor House hotel.” Shapps accused the councils of “hypocrisy”.
One of the councils in attendance was Mr Cameron’s favourite of Hammersmith and Fulham, who sent the Leader, the Chief Executive and 4 other officials, according to the Mail. But they seemed to think it was ok because the bill was picked up by the council’s IT supplier Agilysys. Another council offered the defence that their attendance was paid for by Capita and Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Not a word about these sponsorships from our deadly duo. As the government is embarking on a new era of compulsory competitive tendering for services, some may think it is even more scandalous for councils to be accepting gifts from private companies who have lucrative contracts with them and may be bidding for many more in the future.
And, of course, Pickles and Shapps never eat at anyone else’s expense, do they? I’m sure Pickles never touched the grub or the liquid refreshment at the British Curry Awards or at the County Council Network Dinner, amongst several required to be declared by this scourge of the freebies. Shapps is either an abstemious sort of chap or he doesn’t get many invitations, I suspect the latter, but he did have dinner with the House Builders’ Federation, who might be regarded as having a vested interest in the department’s work.
Not satisfied with his day’s work, Shapps then set off in pursuit of a ‘union baron’ in the shape of Bob Crow, who was ‘accused’ of living in social housing and, according to Shapps, is “taking advantage of publicly subsidised housing.” (unfortunately the original story is behind the Sunday Times paywall, so I have to rely on secondary reports).
Now why the Housing Minister feels free to comment on the housing status of individuals is beyond me. Normally I don’t comment on such matters but I suspect Mr Shapps is an owner occupier and “takes advantage” of a number of hidden public subsidies to the sector like exemption from capital gains tax. According to the Telegraph he may not need public subsidy anyway because “He is the multi-millionaire minister with his own private plane” who has “taken to sleeping on a camp bed in his parliamentary office.” I wonder if they charge hostel rates?
Meanwhile, over at RMT a spokesperson said: “Bob Crow makes no apology for living in social housing at the heart of his local community. Bob was born into a council house and has lived in one all his life, and actually turned down a union mortgage in favour of remaining a tenant. Bob also turned down the right to buy his council house at a discount, as he believes social housing stock should remain available for future generations.’
I don’t agree with Bob about much, but at least someone in this tale has some principles.